Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Ulysses, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Alienation and the Quest for Belonging
Literature, Meaning, and Perspective
Love and Sex
Fate vs. Free Will
Religion, Atheism, and Philosophy
Irish Identity and Nationalism
Summary
Analysis
The final episode of Ulysses is a long, unpunctuated, eight-sentence soliloquy that represents Molly Bloom’s stream of consciousness as she falls asleep on the night of June 16. She begins by noting that her husband has asked for breakfast in bed, which he hasn’t done for years. When they lived at the City Arms hotel, Bloom pretended to be sick, trying to manipulate Mrs. Riordan into leaving him some money in her will—but she didn’t. Molly hates Riordan, who was an ugly, sanctimonious old miser. Molly appreciates that Bloom is nice to old ladies like Riordan, but she also criticizes him for exaggerating his illnesses. She despises someone named Miss Stack for trying to seduce him with flowers.
In the Odyssey, Penelope is Odysseus’s wife. She spends twenty years waiting for Odysseus to return from the Trojan War and inventing strategies to delay the hundred suitors who have been trying to marry her in his absence. While Penelope and Molly are supposed to represent one another, this link is a little bit ironic, because Molly isn’t faithful to her husband. This episode is Joyce’s most radical attempt to capture the human stream of consciousness in Ulysses. After the impersonal, objective style of “Ithaca,” Molly Bloom’s complicated, passionate soliloquy can be shocking and difficult to follow. So far, Molly has only appeared in the novel through Leopold Bloom’s eyes. While she is absolutely central to his life and world, she hasn’t been able to speak for herself until now. In “Penelope,” the tables are turned, and the reader gets to see Bloom through Molly’s eyes. This episode is framed around a dilemma: should Molly bring Bloom breakfast in bed? (It’s worth recalling that he served her breakfast in bed during “Calypso.”) Her decision will indicate the state of her relationship with Bloom, kind of like Bloom’s decision to accept her affair with Blazes Boylan and put aside his interest in other women reflected the state of his commitment to her. While Molly ultimately answers this dilemma, her soliloquy also leaves many of the novel’s central mysteries unsolved and raises plenty of its own questions. For instance, does Molly’s openness about sex make her a feminist figure or an obscene caricature? Is Joyce trying to use Molly to represent all women, and why hasn’t she spoken sooner?
Themes
Molly thinks Leopold probably had sex today, judging by his appetite. It was probably a prostitute, she thinks, and he was probably lying about meeting Hynes and Menton. Or maybe Leopold met the woman to whom he was secretly writing a letter a few days ago. That woman is probably just trying to squeeze money out of him. He probably kissed Molly’s bottom at night just to hide what he’s been up to. Molly remembers how her husband and their maid Mary tried to start an affair—she had to fire Mary for stealing oysters.
Despite her own affair with Boylan, Molly is extremely suspicious of Bloom and jealous of his possible mistresses. Of course, the reader already knows that he didn’t sleep with anyone else, although he get close: he sent another love letter to Martha, masturbated in public to Gerty MacDowell, and visited Bella Cohen’s brothel. Needless to say, after the dream sequences in “Circe,” the reader is also well aware of Bloom’s sexual perversions—maybe even more than Molly is. But the last two episodes showed that, even though he chases other women, Bloom’s thoughts and feelings are constantly focused on Molly. While they both think the other is falling out of love, then, Bloom and Molly are actually more in love than they realize.
Themes
Molly remembers that Leopold “came on [her] bottom” on the same night when she and Boylan held hands, sang, and walked by the Tolka river together. She knows that Leopold knows about her affair: “hes not such a fool [sic].” She imagines seducing “some nicelooking boy” and remembers how dreadful it is to pretend to enjoy sex with men. “Anyhow its done now once and for all [sic],” she thinks. She says that sex is only good “the first time,” but she also yearns for a man to embrace and kiss her. She remembers having to give detailed descriptions of her sexual sins to Father Corrigan at confession, and she starts thinking about what it’s like to sleep with a priest.
Molly doesn’t shy away from providing unfiltered details about sex, which was one of the reasons Ulysses got widely banned for obscenity. Of course, Joyce didn’t care about the public’s prejudices. He was far more committed to realistically depicting human life, consciousness, and sexuality. Even though other characters constantly portray Molly as a hyper-sexual person, in this passage, she actually comments that she doesn’t enjoy sex with most men—she prefers other kinds of intimacy. Her comments suggest that she’s actually seeking love and belonging, not sex. So while she doesn’t have very much shame about her sex life, she’s also not that attached to it. Notably, while the novel claims that Bloom and Molly haven’t had sex in years, Molly does remember one night when Bloom “came on [her] bottom.” It seems that what they haven’t done is specifically try to get pregnant.
Themes
Molly circles back to Blazes Boylan. She wonders if he enjoyed having sex with her, remarks that she didn’t like it when he slapped her on the behind, and wonders if he is thinking or dreaming about her. They drank port and ate potted meat together, and then she fell asleep, until a loud clap of thunder woke her up and she “thought the heavens were coming down about us to punish us.” She remembers how she said a prayer after the thunder, then thinks about how her husband doesn’t believe in the soul. Then, she remembers Blazes Boylan’s enormous genitals and energetic sexual performance in vivid detail.
Bloom was right when he predicted that Boylan would be good in bed: Molly depicts him as brutish and hypermasculine. But their connection was mainly (if not entirely) sexual. The thunderclap that Molly mentions is probably the same one that frightened Stephen in “Oxen of the Sun.” Curiously, she interpreted it in the same way: she thought that God was condemning her sin (adultery). In this way, while she’s not particularly religious, Molly’s worldview seems closer to Stephen’s than Bloom’s. This leads to an important question about Molly: where does she fit into the opposition between Bloom’s scientific temperament and Stephen’s artistic one? There are many possible answers, but one reasonable place to start is with her instinctiveness, sensuality, and constant association with nature.
Themes
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Molly comments on the difficulty of childbirth and laments how frequently Mina Purefoy has to go through it. She considers having another child and decides that she’d have better chances with her husband than with Blazes Boylan. Molly wonders if Leopold’s affair is with Josie Powell (Breen), and she remembers that Leopold and Josie were together at Georgina Simpson’s party, where Molly and Leopold first met (and got into an argument about politics). Molly thinks of several ways she could tell if Leopold has been with Josie, but then she starts to remember how handsome he was as a young man. She also remembers how she told Josie about Leopold to make her jealous.
It might seem surprising that Molly would rather have a child with her bumbling husband than with the virile, passionate Blazes Boylan. Apparently, her affair doesn’t mean that she wants out of the marriage—although she worries that Bloom might. So ironically, even though Molly is having an affair and Bloom is not, she is much more worried about him giving up on the relationship than he is about her. When Molly reminisces about her attraction to Bloom, it’s clear that she doesn’t regret marrying him in the first place. The question is how her love has changed over time.
Themes
Molly feels bad for Josie now: she’s stuck living with her lunatic husband Denis, who even wears his muddy boots to bed. Molly appreciates that Leopold is clean and careful, and she declares that she would rather die than marry another man. She also thinks no other woman would put up with Leopold, and he is lucky to have her. She thinks about Mrs. Maybrick, who fell in love with another man and poisoned her husband.
Although Molly has plenty of complaints about her husband, at the end of the first section of her soliloquy, it becomes clear that she genuinely does appreciate him (and knows that things could be far worse). Whereas her descriptions of Boylan center on his body, her descriptions of Leopold focus on his heart.
Themes
After a paragraph break, Molly begins her long second sentence. She thinks about how men are “all so different” and remembers when she first saw Boylan at tea. She left her suede gloves in the bathroom that day, and she remembers how Boylan stared at her feet. Leopold also likes Molly’s feet. She remembers kissing the singer Bartell d’Arcy in the choir room and imagines showing her husband where it happened, just to shock and surprise him. She drifts through memories of her early relationship with Leopold and starts to remember his obsession with women’s underwear. When the rain caught them in the street one day, he took her gloves and insisted on looking up her skirt. She remembers how he made up an excuse so that they could stay out late, wrote her letters full of complicated words, and made love to her passionately.
Molly starts to think about other romantic experiences from the past. This passage heavily implies that her relationship with Boylan isn’t the first time she’s strayed from Bloom. Meanwhile, Bloom’s fetishes and perversions stand out in her memory, but it appears that his other eccentricities made up for it at first. It’s worth asking if Bloom still looks as selfless and sympathetic in this passage, through Molly’s eyes, as he did earlier in the novel, from his own perspective.
Themes
Molly thinks about other lovers, including a man named Gardner and the old Professor Goodwin, who used to show up at her house unannounced. She almost thought that Boylan wasn’t coming today because of the gift he sent her, but he just ended up being a few minutes late. In a week, Molly and Boylan are going to Belfast for the concert tour, and Molly is glad that her husband won’t be there, because it would be awkward to have Boylan hear her and Leopold through the hotel room wall. She’s also glad not to have to deal with Leopold’s stubbornness (she remembers how he once held up a train because his soup was late). She looks forward to the comfortable train ride to Belfast with Boylan.
Molly is clearly used to annoying and unreliable men, and it appears that there are few (if any) consequences for their misbehavior and irresponsibility. It’s also telling that she interpreted Boylan’s gift as a sign that he wasn’t coming and expects him to be jealous of her marriage. This suggests that he’s not the most trustworthy or morally upstanding person. But that should be no surprise, given that he’s depicted as a superficial brute in other parts of the novel (especially "Sirens"). But this raises the question: why is Molly with him at all? What does she see in him? Is he even a threat to her marriage with Leopold, or does he provide her with something else entirely?
Themes
Molly starts thinking about rival singers and Leopold’s other schemes. He once got her a singing gig by lying to a group of priests, and she doesn’t understand why he associates with the freemasons and Sinn Fein nationalists. She remembers how Lieutenant Gardner, her old lover, died in the Boer War, and this reminds her of how Blazes Boylan’s father got rich selling horses for that war. She hopes Boylan will buy her a “nice present” in Belfast and decides that she’ll take off her wedding ring to avoid attracting attention. She briefly wonders about the best sex position, then remembers how Boylan was frustrated to lose twenty pounds on Lenehan’s Ascot Gold Cup tip.
Molly heavily implies that she’s with Boylan to have fun and enjoy his money, not because she’s in love or views him as an alternative to her husband. She doesn’t see any contradiction in openly carrying on both relationships. At the same time, Molly also makes it clear that Leopold isn’t necessarily more honest or morally upstanding than other men. But one big difference is that he lied for her—even if he’s not as selfless as he lets on, he’s much better than Boylan.
Themes
Molly remembers eating a luxurious dinner with the lord mayor and laments the fact that she can’t afford such a lifestyle on Leopold’s salary. She decides not to pack any underwear for Belfast and thinks about buying new clothes and finding a corset to help her lose weight. She wonders if Leopold picked up her lotion.
Again, Molly’s complaints are based on the fact that Bloom is ordinary, weird, and unimpressive. He’s not necessarily mistreating her—she just wishes he were wealthier and more impressive. (In fact, Molly and Leopold are comfortably middle-class, which was very rare in Dublin in 1904.) In a sense, Molly’s thoughts about her mediocre husband are a filter for the reader’s feelings about Joyce’s deliberately mediocre protagonist. Joyce hopes that Molly and the reader will find Bloom lovable despite—or even because of—his mediocrity.
Themes
Molly Bloom laments the fact that she’s aging and hopes that she’ll end up like some of the respectable old women she sees around Dublin, including Parnell and Edward VII’s mistresses, Kitty O’Shea and Mrs. Langtry. She recalls a “funny story” about Edward VII and an oyster knife, but decides that it’s probably an exaggeration (kind of like scenes from her erotic novels, or the enormous baby Jesuses that some churches display). She starts thinking about her husband’s failure to find a consistent job and poor taste in women’s fashion. Molly nearly got him his job back at Mr. Cuffe’s cattle market—in part because Cuffe enjoyed staring at her chest. But Leopold was too “pigheaded” to follow through with it.
Molly links her feelings about aging and her ambivalence about her husband because she wants to know if she’s made the right decision. She doesn’t necessarily regret marrying Bloom, but clearly some part of her wonders if it was the wrong decision. So she contrasts the romantic stories of women who keep their dignity in old age—even if only as powerful men’s mistresses—with her own fear that she will end up as the mediocre wife of a mediocre husband. Joyce also pokes fun at himself and his readers here: Molly can’t make sense of her “funny story” because she struggles to separate truths from myths and exaggerations. Of course, Joyce has designed this novel to give readers the same experience: there are so many different, often contradictory perspectives that it can be difficult to know where the truth lies.
Themes
In the third sentence of her soliloquy, Molly Bloom thinks about her breasts and compares their beauty to the ugliness of men’s genitals. She thinks of all the times that men have tried to expose themselves to her and remembers one cold night when she decided to use the men’s restroom. Reflecting on female beauty, she recalls how, after losing his job, Leopold once suggested she try nude modeling. She also recalls her husband’s other shortcomings (like his complicated explanations and his tendency to burn kidneys in the pan). Molly’s breast hurts, and she remembers nursing Milly. Outrageously, Leopold once asked to put her milk in his tea. Molly remembers her tryst with Boylan again and starts to wish he were in bed with her; she can’t wait to see him again on Monday.
Molly focuses on men’s ugliness and ungainliness (especially Leopold’s). She connects this to many men’s vulgar, mechanistic view of sex, which reduces it entirely to male pleasure. With men’s harassment and Bloom’s fetishes, sex becomes transactional rather than mutual. So just like Stephen avoids singing commercially because he doesn’t want to sell out his art, Molly refuses to nude model because she doesn’t want to commercialize her beauty. This differentiates her from other women, like Gerty MacDowell, who want others to appreciate and advertise their beauty. (Of course, Molly is a commercial singer, but Joyce emphasizes that her singing isn’t what makes her beautiful—her personality, body, and spirit do.)
Themes
Molly’s fourth sentence begins when a passing train interrupts the course of her thoughts. She starts to think about steam engines and the men who have to work them, then considers the newspapers she burns for warmth and the scorching summers back in Gibraltar. She remembers Mrs. Stanhope, who gifted her a frock, and whose daughter Hester was like her best friend. They went to bullfights together, had sleepovers, and exchanged books. Molly uncomfortably shifts around in bed and relives her memory of the Stanhopes leaving Gibraltar forever, on short notice. They quickly fell out of touch. Bored of repetitive military ceremonies and her father’s soldier friends, Molly dreamed of fleeing Gibraltar.
Fittingly enough, Joyce ensures that the only thing to interrupt Molly’s train of thought is an actual train. Throughout the novel, Bloom has repeatedly mentioned Gibraltar, the British military base at the southern limit of Spain where Molly grew up. But he’s never actually been there—it’s more of a fantasy place for him, like the East or the English seashore. This is the first time that the reader hears about it directly, and while Molly has some fond memories of the place, it’s clearly not as exciting as Bloom imagines it. Rather, Molly felt bored and confined—which is remarkably similar to how she, Bloom, and Stephen feel in Dublin throughout the novel.
Themes
Molly admits that she’s still terribly bored. Before, when she lived on Holles Street, at least she could try to flirt with the fellow who lived across the street. She has basically no mail and nothing to do. Besides the letter from Milly that morning, she has only gotten one interesting piece of mail recently: a braggadocious letter from Floey Dillon reporting that “she was married to a very rich architect.” She thinks of Dillon’s deceased old father, and then Nancy Blake, who recently died of pneumonia. Writing condolence letters is difficult, Molly concludes, but love letters are thrilling—she hopes she gets one from Blazes Boylan.
As a woman in turn-of-the-century Dublin, Molly is basically condemned to spend her days idle at home. And compared to other women, she’s relatively free and liberated, because at least she has a job and can occasionally leave the house to sing. This context might help explain why the only other woman who speaks in this book, Gerty MacDowell, constantly fantasizes about a perfect home and marriage. It’s all she can aspire to. Floey Dillon’s letter shows the same thing: women’s aspirations are limited to marriage and family. These letters can also help the reader imagine what Bloom’s letters look like from Martha Clifford’s perspective; while they’re idle fun for him, they might be Martha’s only lifeline to the outside world.
Themes
In her fifth sentence, Molly focuses on Lieutenant Mulvey, who appears to have been her first love. She remembers when she first received his letter by way of her elderly, devout, nationalistic Spanish housekeeper Mrs. Rubio. Molly passed Mulvey in the street that day, and they later shared their first kiss. Just to scare him, Molly told Mulvey that she was engaged to the Spanish nobleman Don Miguel de la Flora, and he believed her.
Mulvey represents the pure, innocent romance of Molly’s youth. This is no longer available to her in middle age (which is probably part of why she’s jealous of her daughter Milly). The name “Don Miguel de la Flora” is significant because “Flor” means “Flower” (and is therefore associated with “Bloom” and “Virag”). Molly seems to have accidentally fulfilled her childhood promise by marrying Bloom.
Themes
Mulvey also had to leave Gibraltar on short notice. Before he went, he and Molly spent a day on the rock together, watching the boats passing in the sea. Molly wouldn’t let Mulvey touch her, since she was terrified of getting pregnant, but she did help him finish into a handkerchief. They made plans to have sex when they reunited, but they never did. Molly wonders where Mulvey is now and what has become of his life.
“The rock” is a huge mountain that makes up most of Gibraltar. Molly’s early sexual experience there with Mulvey provides an important parallel to her experience with Leopold on Howth Head outside Dublin (which becomes significant at the end of this episode). The unfulfilled promise of sex with Mulvey shows how love tragically strives and inevitably fails to overcome fate. It resembles the unfulfilled promises that hang over Leopold and Molly’s relationship (most notably the promise of a son).
Themes
Molly sifts through other “wild” memories of Gibraltar, like the time she scared away birds by popping open a bag of biscuits, or the time she asked to fire Mulvey’s pistol and adjusted his “H M S Calypso” hat. She remembers a bishop who lectured about the dangers of liberated women who ride bicycles and wear bloomers. This reminds her of Bloom, her husband and her name, which could be much worse. Still, she could also be Mrs. Boylan, and she appreciates her mother’s beautiful name, Lunita Laredo. Molly remembers running through the trees with Mulvey and watching him sail away for India. He gave her a ring, which she later gave to Gardner before he died in the Boer War.
Joyce closely associates Gibraltar’s nature scenes and general “wildness” with Molly’s free, passionate, unrestrained personality. She is the opposite of Bloom and the bishop, who represent the sterility and restraint of society. “H M S Calypso” is another significant name. It refers to the nymph who entranced Odysseus and urged him to delay his homecoming at the beginning of the Odyssey. This novel’s fourth episode was called “Calypso,” which likely referred to Molly keeping Bloom at home. So Molly’s memory of Mulvey’s hat suggests that she recognizes the power she has over men.
Themes
The train passes by again, and its sound interrupts Molly’s soliloquy and reminds her of “Love’s Old Sweet Song.” Molly thinks about other singers, like Kathleen Kearney, who represent the kind of conservative, homegrown Irish womanhood she intensely dislikes. Molly is proud to have grown up as an expatriate and military daughter—she believes she is far more knowledgeable “about men and life” than those other women will ever be. She has no doubts about her ability to charm men (like Gardner and Boylan). She debates what to sing after “Love’s Old Sweet Song” during her concert tour, and she decides to wear a low-cut dress. She feels some vaginal itchiness and carefully lets out a fart as the train sounds again in the distance.
“Love’s Old Sweet Song” emphasizes the enduring power of true love and long-term commitment. When Molly remembers the song here, it’s unclear if she’s thinking about her earlier loves who got away (Mulvey and Gardner), or about her less dashing and mysterious husband Leopold Bloom. Again, Molly’s freedom, confidence, and tenacity don’t fit into the conservative Irish society that surrounds her. But these traits do match her perfectly with Leopold Bloom, who values these aspects of her personality and is happy to watch her exercise her freedom. Finally, in just one of the many curious, subtle correspondences between Molly’s soliloquy and the rest of the novel, the end of this section reenacts the end of “Sirens.” (Bloom left the Ormond Hotel bar and its music, then walked past an old prostitute he had once visited, and finally let out a huge fart. Similarly, Molly starts with music, then thinks uncomfortably about sex, and then farts.) Clearly, Molly and Leopold are on the same wavelength. Perhaps this is Joyce’s way of indicating that they’re deeply and uniquely compatible.
Themes
Molly Bloom’s sixth sentence begins with a series of worries about everyday life and the house. She fears that she might have eaten an expired pork-chop, that smoke is coming out of the lamp, and that it’s dangerous for Leopold to leave the gas on at night for heat. She remembers dressing up her doll during the winter in Gibraltar and starts to worry that she won’t get any sleep at all tonight. She hopes that her husband doesn’t keep drinking all night with medical students, but she wonders why they’re drinking in the first place. Plus, now he’s ordering her to make him breakfast—although she loves it when he brings her breakfast in bed, too.
While Molly’s anxiety is keeping her up, it’s clear that many of her worries are really rooted in her marital troubles. Ironically, she assumes that Bloom was out drinking and acting irresponsibly, when he was actually doing the opposite. He followed Stephen in order to provide responsible adult supervision. When Molly realizes that her husband brings her breakfast in bed all the time, she warms up to the idea of doing the same to him. But she still isn’t convinced.
Themes
Molly decides to make cod tomorrow, instead of meat. She imagines throwing a picnic with Boylan, her husband, and her housekeeper Mrs. Fleming. She remembers how Leopold got himself stung by a bee and once nearly capsized their boat after pretending he knew how to row. She imagines punishing him, then thinks about Sweets of Sin, the book that he has brought her. This reminds her of sailing in Gibraltar.
Molly’s plans have oddly religious undertones and suggest that she’s seeking a more conventional life and marriage. In Ulysses, “cod” is always a pun on “God.” Moreover, June 16, 1904 is a Thursday, so by cooking cod, Molly is choosing to avoid eating meat on Friday (like a good Catholic). The rowboat incident shows that Bloom pretends to be competent when he really isn’t. Needless to say, Molly finds this unattractive. But unbeknownst to her, Bloom would probably be perfectly happy for her to punish and dominate him (at least according to his fantasy from “Circe”).
Themes
Molly admits that she can’t stand being home alone at night. She remembers how Leopold wanted to turn their new house into a music academy or hotel, and then she reflects on all the plans he never carries out (like the Italian honeymoon he promised her). She worries that a beggar could attack her while she’s home alone, and she remembers a recent news article about a criminal who murdered an old woman. Then, she wonders how the criminal’s family must feel and imagines how it would be to go to prison. She remembers when Leopold heard something downstairs one night, so he took a fire poker and investigated, but was “frightened out of his wits.”
Molly’s loneliness shows how Dublin’s strict gender norms confine and depress women like her by cutting them off from the outside world. Meanwhile, despite being a feminine and evidently cowardly man, Bloom gets to spend his days out and about in Dublin. Given this inequity, it’s logical that Molly dreams about a busier house or a vacation. Of course, little does she know that Bloom has also been dreaming about this trip all day and trying to figure out how to afford it. Again, Joyce’s novel shows how their desires converge because he depicts their lives from multiple perspectives. But Bloom and Molly don’t actually know how much each other yearns for that vacation.
Themes
Molly Bloom also wonders why Leopold sent Milly to photography school—she thinks it may have been a plot to avoid her seeing Boylan. But Molly is also glad that Milly is out of the house, because she did annoying things like break a statue. Moreover, Molly finds it strange that Leopold and Milly were spending so much time together, doing things like reading the newspaper. She assumes that Milly was just “pretending to understand.” Still, Molly is both proud and jealous that Milly is coming of age. Milly can have her pick of the boys, for instance, and she’s starting to smoke cigarettes. Milly is careful to protect her skirt so that it doesn’t wrinkle when she sits in the theater, and this reminds Molly of the men who rubbed up against her in the theater line.
Molly’s feelings about Milly are just as conflicted as her feelings about Bloom. She enjoys the peace and quiet but misses Milly’s company and is jealous of Milly’s youth and close relationship with Leopold. (It’s worth remembering that Milly specifically addressed her morning letter to her father.) It would be easy to mistake Molly’s jealousy for anger or hostility, but she doesn’t blame Milly for the things she takes issue with—she is mostly just wishing that she could be young again, too.
Themes
Molly thinks about Milly getting sick and concludes that she isn’t yet old enough to feel “deep” sexual pleasure, even though she’s meeting handsome boys. Molly wonders if “real love” still exists—while it’s noble for men to sacrifice everything for a woman, only “foolish” people would actually do that (like Leopold Bloom’s father, who committed suicide after his wife’s death). Molly recognizes Milly’s beauty, and then she remembers when she once slapped her for misbehavior. Molly concludes that the real problem is that the family needs a “proper servant,” not just the useless old Mrs. Fleming. She also criticizes her husband for bringing Stephen Dedalus over to their house and climbing over the railing to get inside. Again, Molly remarks that the house is a disaster because of Mrs. Fleming.
Molly distinguishes between “deep” sex and teenage sex, as well as between “real love” and casual romance. Therefore, even though she envies Milly’s youth, she promises herself that her own experiences with men are deeper and more meaningful. Still, she clearly has something against “real love” so strong that it drives grieving widows to suicide. This raises the question of whether she really wants an intimate and loving relationship with Bloom, or if she has given up on love and just wants a warm but transactional marriage. When she admits that her husband’s behavior annoys her, she ironically misses the fact that Bloom actually left his keys at home and brought Stephen Dedalus over in part out of concern for her. Thus, in her failure to believe in love, it seems that she also fails to recognize it from her husband.
Themes
Molly suddenly realizes that “that thing has come”—it’s her period. She speculates that Blazes Boylan caused it through “all the poking and rooting and ploughing.” She realizes that her period won’t be over by Monday, and she wonders if Boylan will mind. Once, she remembers, her period came on unexpectedly in the theater, the only time she and Leopold ever got box seats. To avoid staining the sheets, she gets out of bed, but it makes a loud jingling sound that annoys her. In fact, in the afternoon, the bed was so loud that Molly and Boylan ended up having sex on the floor. Molly considers cutting her pubic hair and wonders how Boylan felt about her weight and her breath when she sat on top of him. She sits on the chamber pot and remarks that she “wouldnt mind being a man and get up on a lovely woman [sic].”
Molly’s period can be interpreted in a number of different ways. Most directly, it represents her fertility and the way that nature organizes change into cycles. It may also symbolize the end of a particular cycle in her and Bloom’s marriage. Her flow into the chamber pot might also represent the blood of Jesus in the eucharist chalice, and therefore signal the possibility of redemption for her and Bloom. Alternatively, her period could be divine intervention on Bloom’s behalf in his competition against Boylan, because it means that Molly isn’t pregnant and won’t be able to see Boylan for several days longer than she had planned. Regardless, it marks an important change in the tone of Molly’s soliloquy: from this point onward, she becomes increasingly sentimental and forgiving to her husband.
Themes
In the seventh sentence of her soliloquy, Molly Bloom notes that she had her last period just three weeks ago and starts to wonder if she has a medical issue. She remembers visiting Dr. Collins for an infection years ago. The doctor kept using the word “vagina,” which made her uncomfortable. This was before she got married, and her problem was that she masturbated too much to the “mad crazy letters” that Leopold wrote her.
Molly has more frank, unfiltered, and totally ordinary thoughts about her body. Joyce might be subtly making fun of his readers’ discomfort by depicting Molly as uncomfortable hearing the word “vagina” at the doctor’s office. Bloom’s “mad crazy letters” sound much more passionate and interesting than the relatively boring letters he writes to Martha during the novel. This is another solid reason to think that Bloom’s interest in other women doesn’t threaten his love for Molly.
Themes
Molly then remembers the first time she met Leopold in person: they stared at each other for minutes, for no obvious reason. She found his idealistic political talk charming, and her friends even convinced him that he’d join Parliament one day. He gave her a fancy French song to sing, but then immediately tried to enter her bedroom (with the excuse that he needed to use her sink to wash ink off his hands).
When Leopold and Molly Bloom met, apparently it was love at first sight. Despite all his creative symbolism and radical innovations, Joyce doesn’t shy away from using this cliché. Of course, Molly also realizes how idealistic she was when she fell in love —needless to say, Bloom didn’t quite live up to her hopes (or get elected to Parliament). Molly’s memories of Bloom are also a stand-in for the reader’s, as they reflect back on the rest of the novel from the perspective of its closing scene.
Themes
Noting that she’s uncomfortable sitting on the chamber pot, Molly looks over at Leopold’s uncomfortable, upside-down sleeping position at the foot of the bed, which reminds her of a statue of an Indian god they once saw in a museum. She cleans herself with napkins and remarks that Leopold is fast asleep, probably because he visited a prostitute. She complains about the jingly bed and proclaims that she and Leopold haven’t really improved their living conditions in their sixteen years of marriage—they’re constantly moving houses, Leopold is constantly losing jobs. She worries that he’ll lose his current one because of his involvement in politics.
By comparing Bloom to a statue in a museum, Molly inadvertently refers to the statues of Greek goddesses that Bloom saw at in the museum. These statues represented a pure, unchanging concept of immaterial beauty. This contrasts with the messiness and uncertainty involved in loving real, living and breathing people. In this scene, Bloom looks like a statue, while Molly is cleaning herself on the chamber pot. They clearly represent this binary opposition between sterile, inanimate statues (the cold, analytical Bloom) and mortal, evolving people (the vibrant, fertile Molly). Thus, Molly again represents the flux and vitality of nature, which is a kind of middle ground between Bloom and Stephen’s detached and alienated perspectives on the world. Meanwhile, Molly also offers more interesting context about her family’s socioeconomic situation. Bloom’s income is stagnant, he hasn’t been able to move up at work, and he hasn’t been able to give his family a consistent home. This sheds new light on his constant search for business opportunities and his dreams of retiring to the suburbs. These goals represent personal and professional fulfillment—but he still hasn’t managed to take the first steps toward achieving them.
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The church bells ring. Molly wonders why Leopold came home so late, and she angrily decides that she’ll look for his secret love letters in the morning. She resents his request for breakfast in bed, too. She decides that he can’t be having an affair with Josie Breen, because he isn’t courageous enough to sleep with a married woman. Molly remembers how Leopold gawks at women’s skirts, then starts thinking about Paddy Dignam’s death and running through list of mourners that Joe Hynes published in the newspaper. She has critical things to say about most of the mourners, who have a tendency to mistreat her husband, and she seriously pities Dignam’s family.
Just like Bloom can start out thinking about absolutely any topic and end up thinking about Molly, Molly’s train of thought continually returns back to Bloom. Her resentment towards him mixes with her jealousy of other women and her anger at the men who mistreat him. In short, her doubts ultimately stem from her love for him and her sense that he is putting a distance between them. Yet again, church bells and death go hand in hand—similarly, when Stephen left Bloom’s house perhaps an hour earlier, the church bells rang, and both Bloom and Stephen started thinking about death.
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Molly remembers that Paddy Dignam attended dinner on the night that Ben Dollard had to borrow tight pants for his concert. She reminisces about doing a duet with Simon Dedalus, which leads her to the topic of May Goulding Dedalus’s death and finally the Dedaluses’ “author” and “professor” son, Stephen Dedalus. Aware that Leopold showed Stephen her photo, Molly comments that she should have worn a different outfit for the shoot. She remembers meeting Stephen when he was about eleven, after her infant son Rudy’s death. Before that, she also saw him at Mat Dillon’s house, when he was a little boy.
Curiously, when Bloom remembered lending Dollard tight pants, he never mentioned Paddy Dignam. Perhaps Dignam’s death means that people are already starting to forget him. On the other hand, in “Ithaca,” Bloom listed Simon Dedalus as one of the men who had history with Molly. She seems to be omitting that here. Again, Joyce’s parallax narration—or differing perspectives on the same topic—give the reader a more complete picture than any one perspective ever can. Molly seems impressed by Bloom’s description of Stephen. And like her husband, she quickly associates Stephen with Rudy, which raises the possibility that Stephen could also fill the role of a son for her.
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Molly realizes that her morning tarot cards predicted a “union with a young stranger,” and that she had a dream about poetry the night before. She concludes that these omens make Stephen’s appearance in her life significant. Calculating his age, Molly asks how he can already be a professor. She wonders if he needs a female muse to write about, and she decides that she’s willing to volunteer. Molly imagines Stephen to be brilliant, sensitive, and a good listener—as she thinks all men should be. Since he’s young, she imagines that he must be attractive, sexually eager, and “clean.” She fantasizes about having sex with Stephen and proving her intelligence to him, but then realizes that this might threaten her relationship with Boylan.
The novel implies that Stephen and Molly are fated to meet, because Molly’s omens are similar to Zoe Higgins’s palm-reading (which predicted that Stephen would meet “influential friends”). However, the reader already knows that Stephen is unlikely to return to Bloom’s house (although it’s impossible to say for sure). Molly quickly transitions from picturing Stephen as a son to imagining him as a lover. Bloom thought the same thing: his fantasies of moving Stephen into Milly’s empty room and giving him fatherly advice quickly transformed into dreams of a love triangle with Stephen and Molly. (But Molly sees it as Bloom’s plan to undermine her current affair with Boylan.)
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In the eighth and final section of her soliloquy, Molly Bloom starts to look down on the crass, unsophisticated, and impulsive Blazes Boylan, especially compared to the fantasy version of Stephen Dedalus that she has constructed in her mind’s eye. She asks if Boylan was eager to get in bed with her because he is immature, or because she is irresistible. Then, she starts to wonder what sex is like for men—she wishes she could try it from their perspective, just once. She envies how men can chase women without guilt, and she wishes that it were socially acceptable for women to seek pleasure in the same way.
After building up a fantasy version of Stephen Dedalus in her mind, Molly re-evaluates her relationship with Blazes Boylan and realizes that she can do far better. Of course, Bloom also idealizes Stephen during their meeting, and both Bloom and Molly imagine that Stephen will fix all the problems in their home. (This is one reason that Stephen is frequently associated with the Messiah.) However, Molly’s thought process here suggests that Stephen isn’t going to fix the Blooms’ problems by moving in with them—rather, his visit has enabled Bloom and Molly to reevaluate and rekindle their own relationship. Molly is fully aware of the sexual double standards that plague early 20th century Ireland. Clearly, the chance to address this double standard is part of whatmotivated Joyce to write so openly about sex in this novel.
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Molly admits that she’s dissatisfied with Leopold, who almost never hugs her or shows her affection—except by sometimes kissing her bottom, which doesn’t really count. She fantasizes about picking up a mysterious sailor down at the piers, just like men pick up prostitutes there. She resents her husband for sleeping next to her like a “carcass” or “mummy,” but still demanding that she serve him breakfast in bed in the morning, like a servant. Men “treat you like dirt,” she declares, and the world would be far better off if women ran it. There would be no war or senseless gambling.
In the closing pages of her soliloquy, Molly identifies the core of her problem with her husband: his lack of affection and attention. This may be surprising, because throughout the entire book, Bloom has yearned to be closer to Molly (and fantasized about her curvaceous body). But it turns out that both of them want more from the other. In turn, Molly doesn’t want to give Bloom the satisfaction of breakfast in bed if he’s not willing to attend to her needs sometimes, too. Molly’s vision of a world run by women closely resembles her husband’s fantasy of a just, equitable society without vices. This suggests that, despite all their resentment, the Blooms share many of their fundamental values.
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Molly’s mind returns to Stephen Dedalus, who she assumes is “running wild” because his mother is no longer around to care for him. She laments the fact that Stephen’s parents don’t appreciate their “fine son,” while she and Leopold had to bury their son Rudy when he was still an infant. Trying not to fall into “the glooms,” Molly asks herself why Stephen wouldn’t stay the night and wonders where he’s wandering now. She remembers enjoying late nights with friends and wonders what Stephen is seeking—her mind drifts from this to Stephen’s last name, the unusual names in Gibraltar, and the little Spanish she still remembers.
Molly’s theory about Stephen is much more accurate than Leopold’s (even though he spent several hours with Stephen). Molly identifies the inverted tragedies of the Bloom and Dedalus families: the Blooms tragically lost a son and the Dedaluses tragically lost a mother. And she sees the same obvious solution as Leopold: the two broken families should unite to form a single, complete family. She wonders why Stephen would turn down this possibility of a complete family, which she and Bloom have wanted for so long. (The answer is that Stephen cares more about his freedom and autonomy—even if he has to sleep in the street.) Curiously, unlike Molly, Bloom never asked or wondered where Stephen was going after he left 7 Eccles Street. He just let Stephen wander off into the night.
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Molly fantasizes about teaching Stephen Spanish, or even bringing him breakfast in bed. She thinks that he could move into the Bloom household, sleeping in Milly’s old room. He could read in bed in the mornings with Molly, while Leopold brings them both breakfast. Molly even imagines the ideal outfit for this occasion.
Molly’s thoughts return to the love triangle fantasy. In this fantasy, Stephen gives her all the sexual, romantic, and intellectual excitement she wants in a man, while Bloom continues to materially provide for her. She realizes that she needs both: novelty and stability, or sex and breakfast.
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Suddenly, Molly decides that she will “just give him [Leopold] one more chance.” She’ll get up early, make him breakfast, put on her best underwear for him, and have sex with him. If he won’t, she’ll make him watch her have sex with someone else. If he just wants to kiss her bottom, she will make him pay for the privilege. She remembers that she is on her period, but she fantasizes about another “good enough” way to satisfy Leopold. She hears the clock go off, imagines people around the world getting up to start the day, and she decides to try to sleep.
Molly has an epiphany: it’s still possible to save her marriage, family, and home. After the rest of this soliloquy, it’s not surprising that her solution is sex. It promises to bring them everything they lack: pleasure, emotional intimacy, and children. Indeed, for Joyce, sex is practically holy because it represents the intersection of these important needs. Still, Molly quickly realizes that her scheme might not work. She thinks about how she can redirect her creative energy and her impulse to action. The people starting their day echo her desire to turn over a new leaf.
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Molly plans how she will clean and prepare the house in the morning, and she decides to buy flowers and “have the whole place swimming in roses.” She describes the incredible beauty of nature and declares that it’s useless to simply say that God doesn’t exist: instead, people should “go and create something.” Neither Christians nor atheists know who the first person in the universe was, but everyone does know that the sun will rise tomorrow.
Molly’s flood of roses in the house is a metaphor for the domestic bliss that she and Bloom have sought throughout the novel. This use of flowers also gives a new significance to the family name “Bloom,” which represents the act of flourishing. Again, Molly is associated with natural beauty and change. She gives her own peculiar answer to the philosophical, scientific, and theological questions that torment Stephen and Bloom. While Bloom and Stephen obsessively try to understand and control their lives and worlds, she chooses to affirm life and embrace the world. Stephen looks for meaning through God, philosophy, and literature, but he still despairs and feels lost. Bloom seeks meaning through science, business, and politics, but always feels powerless and meaningless. Both of them feel unable to create (art for Stephen and children for Bloom) because they lack the understanding that they want. Instead of following them down the same path, Molly chooses action. She doesn’t wait for conditions to be right, the world to make sense, or fate to reveal itself. Instead, she uses the resources available to her to create something beautiful out of the world.
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Molly remembers lying in the flowers on the Howth Head peninsula near Dublin with Leopold. It was sixteen years ago, on the day he proposed. They kissed passionately and he compared her to a mountain flower. He said that the sun shone for her, which she considers the “one true thing he said in his life.” This is what made her fall in love with him. Rather than answering his proposal, she first “gave him all the pleasure [she] could.” She gazed at the sea and thought about the beauty of her past life and loves Gibraltar, then looked back at him. He asked her again to marry him, and she embraced him and said: “yes I said yes I will Yes.”
The novel’s famous closing lines represent Molly Bloom’s ultimate affirmation of life, love, and forgiveness. While her first word in the novel was “Mn” (a mumbled “no”), she ends with “Yes.” This transformation represents her evolving attitude towards her husband over the course of her soliloquy. She rediscovers her love for Leopold in the novel’s final pages. In fact, the scene she describes seems to merge her memories of Lieutenant Mulvey into her memories of Bloom, suggesting that Bloom is her one true love. Her final “Yes” is both the answer she gave to his marriage proposal and an expression of the fact that she’s decided to give him breakfast in bed. This closing scene calls up a wide range of Joyce’s important motifs and symbols (like flowers, the sea, and metempsychosis). It also links Molly’s memories of her past loves to her relationship with Bloom, which suggests that she is ready to channel all of her passion and energy into the future they both want to share. The novel ends with a sense of wonder at the beauty of love and nature.
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