When Women Speak

Abstract

I propose here a feminist reading of Finnegans Wake , or rather, another feminist reading of the novel, since this approach is not new: there are some quite solid studies on the theme. It is believed that in Finnegans Wake Joyce brings woman to light, contrary to what happens in Ulysses , a novel in which the writer leaves her (or them) practically mute for more than six hundred pages. My thesis is that Anna Livia is the great narrator of the Wake , but instead of silencing the other voices, she allows everyone to speak, and unites the talk of everybody in a colorful weave, a collage of narrative threads that she is careful not to break, so that they may have a continuity, albeit tenuous.