Close Reading: Molly's Body (Revised)

Cindy Lee

Professor Frey

English 103

November 2, 2011

Close Reading: Molly’s Body

Molly -one of the main characters of the science fiction novel, Neuromancer, written by William Gibson- is an attractive, physically strong, mysterious woman who becomes a help to Case (the main character of this novel). She is a strong woman whose interaction with space is stronger than what the outside activity can do to her. She moves through and creates space the way she wants and can exclude those that gets in the way. This is due to her confidence in her strengths. The novel describes Molly as “Her body language was disorienting, her style foreign.  She seemed continually on the verge of colliding with someone, but people melted out of her way, stepped sideways, made room” (55). This tells the reader that Molly wants to connect with someone but because of her personality or her aura, the people surrounding her gives her space; she has a feel or a look that gets the people around her to suspect and move aside from her. Molly expects to be respected from people she interacts with by her attractive looks and strong personality; that is why she walks through her path confidently knowing that those that are in the way won’t cross her. But Molly allows Case to share her space or be her other eye seeker so he could see the world in what Molly sees. Case wanted to take over Molly’s body to go into depth to see the space around her and “For a few frightened seconds he fought helplessly to control her body. Then he willed himself into passivity, became the passenger behind her eyes” (55). With her strong presence, Case cannot connect to her body.

Molly started out in the novel as a girl who wore black leather clothes with some technologies implanted on her. One of the implant was the razor sharp blades that comes out from her own free will. We find out that there are sharp blades sliding out of her nails because “Case felt the blades move, very slightly, beneath her nails” (178). The other implant was the mirror shade glasses that allows her to see in the dark, know the time, and map the world. Case meets Molly for the first time and “he realized that the glasses were surgically inset, sealing her sockets. The silver lenses seemed to grow from smooth pale skin above her cheekbones, framed by dark hair cut in a rough shag. The fingers curled around the fletcher were slender, white, tipped with polished burgundy. The nails looked artificial” (25). 

The technological alteration in her body changed Molly as it was written in Chapter 11. In Chapter 11, Case finds out that Molly was a former cyber prostitute. Instead of being the one in control like she is now, she was controlled by others and lived the life that she didn’t want.  She doesn’t want to go back and remember her past but she started to remember each one bits by bits. This is where technology fails for Molly. She technologically enhanced herself with these alterations to survive from her past and create a new life. She altered her body to forget her past and not to be brought up about being a prostitute again. She enhanced herself with razor sharp blades on her nails to be protected from those that gets in her way. If someone were to attack her or to bother her, she could kill that person in one kill with her sharp nail blades without hesitation. She enhanced herself with glasses so that she won’t be able to cry with tears flowing down from her eyes. When she cries, she swallows her tears instead and splits it out. The glasses also make the person that’s looking into her eyes confused and not able to read her or know how she’s feeling. Because of these technologies implanted on her body, she has the confidence to control herself and become a stronger person. It extended her body into space differently than a non-altered body by giving her more protection and freedom than what she was as a prostitute.

Molly inhabits the various spaces in Neuromancer by helping to map out Chiba City with Case. With her strong presence and her technological body parts, she’s able to create her own map and help Case map out Neuromancer. She’s able to protect herself and Case from anyone that gets in the way by giving Case more confidence to not hide in bars or alleys anymore. He didn’t have the guts to find his way through Chiba City but with Molly by his side, he’s able to map out faster than what he could expect from himself. Neuromancer shows the reader how technology could really affect one’s personality and changes in one’s actions like Molly. These alterations bring a huge change in a world of reality verse a world of technologically enhanced human beings.

Citations:

 Gibson, William (1994). Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books.