SOURCE: "Molly's 'Yes': The Transvaluation of Sex in Modern Fiction," in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. X, No. 1, Spring, 1968, pp. 107-18.

In the following essay, Harris discusses the rising importance of sexuality in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fiction.

" . . . and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will say Yes."¹ Any devoted reader of the twentieth-century novel will immediately identify that passage as the closing words of Joyce's Ulysses, and any who have followed the critics' discussion of Joyce know that the passage constitutes a rather engaging crux. One position is represented by Stuart Gilbert's triumphant assertion that "it is significant for those who see in Joyce's philosophy nothing beyond a blank pessimism, an evangel of denial...