Despite all the stereotypes and characterizations that modernism and its literary masters bring, any kind of overwhelming optimism is rarely cited among the accusations. Often summarized as a movement conceived in the wake of the horrors of the First World War, modernist literature rarely betrays much optimism in describing the abject disillusionment of the post-war landscape. It may seem incongruous, therefore, to anyone with even the most basic familiarity with the principles of literary modernism to accuse the author of one of his most canonical texts of presenting – in that same text – an optimistic worldview. But this is precisely the intent of this article. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay This is not, of course, an entirely unprecedented position, perhaps best represented by Stuart Gilbert in his statement that "It is significant for those who see in Joyce's philosophy nothing beyond an empty pessimism, a gospel of denial, which Ulysses ends with a triple hymn of affirmation” (qtd. in Harris 388). Furthermore, drawing on Molly's famous “Yes,” this article offers as a comparison the interior monologue of another modernist matriarch, Addie Bundren of). William Faulkner. Although both the monologues and their respective speakers have much in common, Molly's is ultimately a sign of acceptance, while Addie maintains an impenetrable rejection. The reading suggests a parallel between the Lacanian world of the symbolic and the post-war world of modernists, as both represent worlds based on separation, difference and the abandonment of a previous state of perceived unity. Identifying the essential division between Molly and Addie as their respective acceptance and rejection of the Lacanian order, each woman is presented as the vehicle of the. its author's worldview. While Addie's caustic rejection of the symbolic world pushes As I Lay Dying to an abject and absurd conclusion, condemning the Bundrens and the Faulknerian world to decay ever deeper into the grotesque, Molly's resurgent, melodic affirmation signals her willing acceptance not only of the symbolic order. , but also of the inevitable absurdity of the modern world. Through Molly's “Yes,” Joyce asserts that even in a world of post-war disillusionment, life can still be accepted, celebrated, and confessed. Critics have long noted similarities between these two powerful modernist forces: Faulkner, called “the quintessential Southern modernist,” and Joyce, often referred to together with similar epithets that usually do not require a second qualifying adjective (Koch 55). Critics who attempt to draw on these similarities, however, are often faced with the task of first addressing a significant obstacle posed by Faulkner himself: his own repeated denial of them. Craig Werner notes that in 1932 Faulkner told Henry Nash Smith that " had not read Ulysses when he wrote "The Sound and the Fury" (242). Faulkner appears to have carried these protests to his deathbed. When asked about Ulysses in a 1962 interview with Vida Markovic a few months before his death , Faulkner only said, “It's interesting, but I probably didn't like it, because I never went back to the books we like” (465). complaints ultimately hold little weight against the overwhelming evidence of Joyce's influence on his work. Between the shared use of stream-of-consciousness narrative techniques and both writers' dedication to regional representation – it can be said that Faulkner, in his faithful portraitof the fictional county of Yoknapatawpha, did for the American South what Joyce did for Dublin – the undeniable similarities between the two writers leads Craig Werner to confidently state that Faulkner “not only knew Joyce's works but adapted Joycean techniques for his own voice” (242). Werner goes on to present Faulkner, through his use of these Joycean techniques, as a solution to the problematic “realistic-romantic dichotomy” of American fiction (243). Werner argues that Faulkner, particularly in his later fiction, succeeds “as Joyce had done twenty years earlier in Ulysses, in reconciling the realistic and romantic modes” (257). This article, however, seeks to argue against this claim, citing Faulkner's As I Lay Dying as, ultimately, a failure to achieve the realistic and romantic balance of Ulysses. While Joyce's transcendence of the realistic-romantic dilemma plaguing American literature "supports his vision of the possibility of human balance in a hostile environment," Faulkner neither merges nor transcends the realistic and the romantic in As I Lay Dying, instead leaving them to they mix in a disturbing and ironic cacophony in which the modern world appears almost uninhabitable. Aware of but unable to accept the postwar world that Ulysses so deftly transcends, Faulkner must instead make it grotesque, a mysterious caricature of himself. Despite significant discrepancies in length, both As I Lay Dying and Ulysses are in some ways modern retellings of Homer's tale. Odyssey. However, while both mission narratives pay homage to the epic, Joyce illustrates the ways in which Homer can be reshaped for the modern world, while Faulkner ultimately highlights the ways in which this is not possible. If Ulysses is the Odyssey rewritten for the twentieth century, As I Lay Dying is its grotesque inversion, asserting that the heroic epic has no place in the modern world. While numerous parallels present themselves between the two quest narratives, perhaps none are a better representative of the works as a whole than that drawn between the novel's respective matriarchs, Molly Bloom and Addie Bundren. Both women function as unsung heroes – or anti-heroes – of their narratives, silently driving the action around them. While Addie's death incites the series of comically futile misadventures that befall the Bundrens on their journey to Jefferson, Molly's infidelity is – however unwitting – the force behind much of Bloom's odyssey throughout Dublin. Both women emerge as the tired and battered matriarchs of their families, who – carrying the immense burden of providing the entire motivation behind the plot of their narratives while each receives only a single opportunity to express their perspectives – are ultimately not less exploited by their own creators. Molly and Addie, “the women who motivate action while remaining still,” each tell only a single chapter of their respective narratives, managing in that time to define the definitive worldview represented by each novel (Werner 252). Both dissatisfied wives and mothers, Molly and Addie discuss marital and sexual discontent at length. Addie's disdainful and contemptuous memory of Anse's marriage proposal recalls Molly's memory of "the day he [Leopold] proposed to me", with both women seeming to suggest that they had taken a more active role in that decision compared to passive and nervous husbands. they accepted the probable recall (Joyce 18.1573). While Molly ultimately makes her decision based on the rather flippant conclusion, "He's as good as anyone else," Addie displays a similar indifference with the brief and emotionless, "And So I Got Anse" (Joyce18.1604; Faulkner 98). In terms of sexual dissatisfaction, Molly's discussion is considerably more overt, with its multiple, obtuse sexual references overshadowed only by the occasional inscrutability of its meandering stream-of-consciousness narrative style. While Addie's reflections on sexuality are perhaps more nuanced than Molly's, they address similar notions of dissatisfaction, with Addie's reference to being "violated by Anse in the nights" reflecting Molly's summary of the marital relationship as "mere ruin for any woman and no satisfaction in pretending to like it until it comes” (Faulkner 99; Joyce 18.98) Likewise, both Molly and Addy refer specifically to a dissatisfaction with the inherent vacancy of female sexuality dictated by the sexual organ itself. While Molly openly questions her body, asking, “what is [sic] the idea that makes us like this with a big hole between us,” Addie's reference is vague and elusive – “The shape of the my body in which I was a virgin is shaped like a” – referring to her vagina only as a physical gap in the text (Joyce 18.151; Faulkner 100). While the comparison of these passages comes to an important conclusion for feminist criticism – with both women identifying femininity and female sexuality as something inherently lacking, ultimately defined by absence – it is here that the psychoanalytic implications of their narratives differ. Addie’s inability to verbally represent her body aligns her sexual dissatisfaction with her dissatisfaction in language, articulated in her earlier statement that “Words are no good; the words never even fit what they are trying to say” (Faulkner 99). Addie's denunciation of language evokes a rejection of the Lacanian world of the symbolic, a “yes” from Molly – both a sexual and a verbal statement – ​​clearly rejected. The Lacanian meaning of Addie's narrative is perhaps best explained by Doreen Fowler in “Matricide and the Mother's Vendetta." Fowler's reading justifies seeing Addie's hatred of language as a rejection of the Lacanian theory that " for a child to acquire language, to enter the realm of the symbolic, he must become aware of difference” and therefore must end “the imaginary dyadic relationship with the mother in which they find themselves complete” (Fowler 317). Therefore, as Fowler summarizes, “Addie hates language because it is based on separation and difference” (320). Directly quoting Lacan, Fowler further explains Addie's predicament by stating that “there is no woman who is not excluded by the nature of words” (qtd. in Fowler 320). As a result, Addie resents the institution that symbolically necessitates her death, condemning language and speech as simply “a form, a container…a meaningful form, profoundly lifeless, like the doorframe of an empty door” ( Faulkner 100). While Addie fights in vain against the Lacanian Symbolic, Molly accepts it if not transcends it entirely. Both beginning and ending with the word “yes,” Molly willingly frames and defines her narrative through the linguistic sign of affirmation, thus signaling her unreserved and ultimately almost orgasmic acceptance of the symbolic order. Furthermore, Molly's absolute acceptance of the symbolic along with the formlessness of her narrative seems to transcend order altogether. Rejecting the traditional form of prose and refusing to conform to even normal sentence and paragraph breaks, Molly's thoughts appear as an almost entirely uninterrupted and featureless wall of text. In this way, Molly's relationship with the symbolic seemspresent a triumphant counterargument to Addie's condemnation of language as a “profoundly lifeless meaningful form.” Molly transcends the boundaries of the symbolic, ultimately managing to convey meaning even in the absence of form. Where Addie can only see the frame of an empty door, Molly evokes the opposite, conveying a profoundly formless meaning. Thus, while Molly successfully transitions from the world of the imaginary to the world of the symbolic, Addie remains trapped in the opposition between the two, mirroring Craig Werner's understanding of Joyce's transcendent union of the realistic and romantic conflict that continued to plague the novel American. While Joyce defines modernism as a perfect fusion of realism and romanticism, “drawing its power from a refusal to attempt to separate them,” Faulkner, like Addie, remains caught between the two (Werner 245). Following a similar line of thought, Benjamin Koch also sees Faulkner paralyzed between two worlds. While Werner focuses on the realistic-romantic dichotomy in the American novel, Koch paints the Faulknerian dilemma in terms of the modern and the Victorian, explaining that Faulkner "leans strongly in a modernist direction, but is unwilling to give up his more Victorian reflections entirely." (63). Therefore, this article also presents Faulkner in a conflict between the modern and the premodern, parallel to that between the symbolic and the Lacanian imaginary. In his overview of Lacan, Robert Dale Parker summarizes the distinction between the two realms, explaining: “While in the imaginary there is neither difference nor absence, in the symbolic difference and absence reign” (139). This description is also illustrative of the difference between modernists' perception of the world before and after the war. After the fall of the perceived unity and totality of the previous era – the imaginary – modernists found themselves faced with a world in which difference and absence reigned. Thus, through Addie's rejection of the symbolic, Faulkner signals her rejection of the horrific remnants of the postwar world. Meanwhile, Molly's radiant, lilting acceptance of the symbolic signals Joyce's acceptance of postwar life, finding value even in a seemingly meaningless world. Struggling against Addie's attempted rejection of the symbolic, the remaining Bundren repeatedly try and fail to replace her, leaving her. in their wake a grotesque collection of inadequate substitutes: bananas, false teeth, a dead fish. Through Addie, Faulkner condemns the Bundrens and the modern world to an ironic and unsatisfying conclusion. As Fowler summarizes, “the Bundrens try in vain to bridge the gap at the center of their being with substitute after substitute, metaphor after metaphor” (328). Molly also complains of a void at the center of her being, “that big hole between us.” However, her attempts to “dab” him are ultimately not in vain, as the novel ends triumphantly with the sound of her orgasmic affirmation. For Faulkner the linguistic statement is ironic and distorted, with Molly's “yes” made grotesque and entrusted to the voice of a madman. Darl's cacophonous "yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes" rings out in jarring discord as the novel descends toward its absurd conclusion (Faulkner 146). Faulkner's perverse appropriation, however, can do little to diminish the resounding glory of the triumphant conclusion to which Molly's “yes” brings Ulysses. Although no less aware than Faulkner of the abject condition of the modern world, Joyce ultimately reclaims the value of life, even in the face of a potentially meaningless world. Through Molly, Joyce asserts that even in the wake of post-war absurdity, life can be accepted and celebrated. Joyce thus emerges as the sispiphous hero of modernism,:.