Families in Ulysses and One Hundred Years of Solitude are often fertile ground for distortions and curses, not for the stability and progress expected by most part of parental relationships. Genealogies are perverted or fruitless: the Buendía line, with its relentless generation of repetitive names and its incestuous and replicative procreative impulses, creates monsters like the last pig-tailed child, doomed clones like the 17 Aurelians, and madness in José Arcadio Buendía and Colonel Aureliano Buendía. The opposite situation in Ulysses, with the stunted pseudofamily left by May Dedalus' death and Bloom's futile paternal fantasies, also suggests that relationships lead to regression and failure. Yet everyone is inexorably brought back to this "original source", to this vortex of disintegration. The family group is so isolated, inescapable - magical intervention lures Aureliano Segundo to his home after miraculously surviving the plantation massacre, Bloom returns to Molly and their unhappy bed after an epic jaunt around Dublin - which is as surprising as these families persevered. for as long as they did. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay It is clear, at least, that paternal guidance and paternal strength are not the sustaining force here. As Patricia Tobin describes the Buendías, "where...fatherhood is never more than a biological accident, in such a family one can hardly expect the triumph of the paternal promise that the present progeny will be identified as the continuation of generations past....Fatherhood confers neither legitimacy nor legacy on the Buendías" (53). Indeed, it is the women, a truly unconventional group of Atlases, who both sustain and continue to ruin the crumbling family foundation of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Ulysses. Neither the innocent castes nor the dutiful mothers of the traditional epic, these women are the true origin and continuation of power: the maternal whores, the eternal goddesses (both living and dead), and the vengeful virgins. Female presence and will dominate these novels, driven by the uncommon allure and control of women. Ã?rsula, along with a group of distinctive females, rules Macondo with an iron matriarchal fist. Her seemingly supernatural powers recall the constant ghostly whisper of May Dedalus and the bewitching allure of the prostitutes in Ulysses. However, before exploring these powerful characters individually, it is crucial to examine them in comparison to their curiously incapacitated male counterparts, including Bloom, complacently betrayed, and Aureliano Buendía, unhappy and withdrawn in love. Carol Siegel proposes that Bloom is convinced of his "inability to 'do a man's job,'" especially considering his ten-year sexual dry spell with Molly (181). When Bloom hallucinates in "Circe," he imagines himself being anointed as the new "female man," about to give birth, and, as Brenda Oded points out, "Bloom continues to play the role of maternal father in the novel's closing sections." (Joyce 403, Oded 44). The recurring infantile and feminized "weak man" with vagina envy merely empowers women, who must compensate and diversify to compensate for male inadequacy. For example, Bella Cohen maintains her femininity while dominating Bloom, making her a doubly intimidating hybrid of hyper-gendered strength. Siegel continues, “Dude, the “sucker” threatens Bloom with phallic but feminine high heels, “glistening in their proud erection”… (Joyce 433). She refers to herself as a lady and tells Bloom tocall her "lover" even though the stage directions assign Bella male pronouns (Joyce 436)... Bello taunts Bloom for urinating sitting down and orders him to "Do it standing, sir!" (Joyce 438) ...Bloom's relationship with Bella is as changeable as their respective genders" (183). Bella/Bello's ability to transcend gender boundaries, as well as evidence of Ursula and Pilar's existence at the of time and the return from the dead of May Dedalus suggest a paranormal power, as if the women in these novels are invincible goddesses in almost every way, these women display traits that show them to be superior to men Molly's far surpasses Bloom's (and is literally besieged by women in "Circe," a chapter named after a legendary mind-controlling witch), and even little merman-like Rebeca can match the infamous José Arcadio's luxuriant habits. Amaranta is as ruthless as the virile Arcadio (who, incidentally, is deposed by Ã?rsula, who becomes a despot "who ruled the city" (116)) and Meme easily surpasses her father's gluttonous exploits. These women achieve the mythical excesses of the classical gods while exercising total control over the men around them. In much the same way that Bella lorded over Bloom, Ursula "had found the path that her husband had failed to discover" and Amaranta Ã?rsula returned to Macondo "leading her husband with a silk rope tied around her neck" ( 40, 405). Returning to Bella, Jonathan Quick states that her power is "the greatest of all. She is a powerful figure of feminine ancestry, who steps out of Carmen's role as a victimized free spirit and overwhelms men with her deep knowledge of her sexual vulnerability " (236). But even without the contrast with men, the women in these novels are still idols in their omnipotence and mystery. From Stephen's reflections on a midwife and how "one of her sisters dragged me screaming into life. Creation from nothing... that's why mystical monks. Will you be like gods?" to Miss Kennedy and Miss Douce's association with the legendary Sirens, to Úrsula appearing as "a new-born old woman" upon her death, women are portrayed as harbingers of life and destruction, who can even decide when to die (Joyce 32 , Márquez 368). They are the be-all and end-all of the universe, directed with a wave of Ursula's "archangel arm" or with her presence "in so many places at the same time" or even with her improved clairvoyance (359, 266) . According to Arnold M. Penuel, "...Årsula, who loses her sight in her final years, becomes a sort of seer, commenting on the lives of the other characters as if she were a composite Greek chorus" (552). However, these marvelous powers o magic are limited, almost ironically. Pilar lives to be 145, not forever. The bevy of prostitutes may creep into Bloom's dreams, but he easily avoids them when they pass by on the street. Ã?rsula can predict the future, but she cannot prevent the end of her family. It's as if women were demi-goddess, almost omnipotent but with an escape clause. These flaws are flaws in these women's plans to resurrect their families using superhuman methods. In any case, if the women in these novels have divine origins or abilities, then their temple is the brothel. All roads lead to the brothel in both Ulysses and One Hundred Years of Solitude because prostitutes are necessary for hereditary survival. The bastardization of genealogy, normally a sign of the prioritization of sexual wantonness and pleasure over family achievement, is here represented as an injection of innovation into an increasingly stagnant and doomed lineage. But promiscuity and productivity are an uncomfortable pair, as evidenced in the case of Molly's mother, LunitaLaredo, who is the vehicle of "painfully contradictory images that emerge with the "idea" of her mother, both a common whore and a sexual adventuress, an ethnic exotic and a racial outcast, a woman whose body alternately evokes shame and pride in his daughter” (Quick 226). The prostitute's enormous role in the generative faculties of families is also understood partly as a parody of the paternal epic of the Gilgamesh or Beowulf variety and partly as a celebration of the sexually liberated pagan maternal figure. Siegel mentions a passage in which, "in his drunken babble of 'Circe or, what am I saying, The Altar of Ceres,' Stephen confuses, as Bloom does, the 'laughing witch' with the fertile mother" (183) Rather than a network of blood extrapolated from a heroic male epicenter, these novels flout epic tradition by giving supreme power to prostitutes, who view men as transitory and peripheral throughout One Hundred Years of Solitude, the fate of the Buendías depends on the ability of the prostitute and fortune teller Pilar Tender to give birth and the fruitful influence of the unmarried Petra Cotes on the livestock, immediately following insinuations about Molly's 25-plus prostitute affairs, she is described as Gea-Tellus, or Mother Earth, "great with seed" (592, 606). Even real prostitutes, "a necessary evil," are invested with maternal tendencies and the promise of mothering abilities. Even "Zoe, urging Bloom to follow her up the stairs, is both whore and mother with" the hand that rocks the cradle “and with a touch reduces Bloom to his infant self (Joyce 408)” (Siegel). , 182). In other cases, however, rather than the prostitute taking on maternal characteristics, it is the mothers who are instead re-identified as licentious whores. May Dedalus is the most visible example according to Oded, who argues that May "is assigned two roles, that of the ghost of the murdered parent and that of the guilty queen" (43). She is both Gertrude and Ann Hathaway, full of doubly defined "amor matris" for Stephen, someone who "had loved him, carried him in her arms and in her heart" (23). Her character reverses the role of the prostitute in much the same way as Pilar Tenera: they unleash incestuous lust as they suck thoughts and passion from those who guiltily desire them, to become unbreakable links in the evolutionary and genealogical chain. While Arcadio is literally sexually attracted to his mother Pilar, Stephen is intensely affected by the spirit of his mother May. Oded argues that "although she is physically absent, the ghost woman with ash on her breath haunts Stephen and does not allow him to create... The surrogate mothers - Ellen Bloom, May Dedalus, Molly Bloom, Old Gummy Granny and Mina Purefoy - make up a maternal hell that must be conquered" (43). Ultimately, prostitutes help save and expand families in these novels, but at what cost? Their presence, however powerful, is unhealthy because it dilutes the purity of the genetic heritage and encourages the type of sexual deviance that Ursula sought to avoid with her futile habit of chastity. With whores who are inevitably mothers and vice versa, deified women who have the prophecy but not the will to prevent genealogical curses, and virgins who are either so sterile or so vituperative that they cannot be expected to give birth, it is as if the maternal prostitute served the useless function of prolonging and perverting lineages already destined to become extinct. The prevalence of morbidly dangerous virgins in these novels calls into question the extent to which poisonous sexuality can determine a woman's power. Joyce and Márquez's examples are nothing like Spenser's religiously chaste Fairy Queen or sweetly innocent Eve. Without requiring technical virginity, these women are the black widows of families, full of. 52-55.