Episode 18: Penelope

Since the beginning of our odyssey through Bloomsday, we have been journeying toward Molly’s perspective, delivered here in “Penelope” unfiltered and with minimal interruption. The promise of hearing from Molly in the final episode has been a motivating interest, pulling us through the novel; she seems certain to provide the last piece of the puzzle.  Joyce referred to Molly’s monologue in “Penelope” as “the indispensable countersign to Bloom’s passport to eternity” (Letters I 160).  Sure enough, we can spend eternity reading this novel and this episode in particular, experiencing the text differently each time.  In typical Joycean fashion, “Penelope” will confound our desires for closure and satisfaction, but it guarantees a life’s worth of interesting moments to scrutinize.

Some readers of “Penelope” will find Molly offensive.  D. H. Lawrence described the episode as “the dirtiest, most indecent, obscene thing ever written” (qtd. in Chabon). Its obscenity contributed to Ulysses being banned in the English-speaking world for over a decade after its initial publication in 1922.  A friend of Joyce’s named Mary Colum denounced “Penelope,” calling it “an exhibition of the mind of a female gorilla” (qtd. in Herring 57). While that description seems a bit harsh on Molly, the audacity of a man attempting to represent Woman (much less any individual woman) was roundly rejected in early feminist reactions to the text.  Many felt that Joyce had misunderstood and misrepresented the female mind and perspective. Indeed, Molly Bloom herself visited Joyce in dreams, castigating him for “meddling” in her business (Lawrence 72).  

Or, maybe Joyce was a protofeminist, creating Molly as a sexually liberated woman with freely expressed desires and the agency to speak and do as she wishes.  In later criticism, scholars began to recognize a shared purpose between feminism and Joyce’s efforts in Ulysses generally and “Penelope” specifically to expose and disrupt the patriarchal conventions of literature and representation (Lawrence 74), and some even considered Molly’s soliloquy the paragon of écriture féminine, a style whereby language “is fluidly organized and freely associative. Thus, it has the capacity to both reflect and create human experience beyond the control of patriarchy” (Tyson 93).  In this view, “Penelope” opens the door to new post-patriarchal literary forms.

Outside of feminism, scholars have shifted their reading of Molly in each generation.  In the 1920s, she was obscene. In the 30s, scholars sought to canonize Joyce and Ulysses, so they therefore avoided criticizing her vulgarity “for fear that in impugning Molly’s reputation, they would tarnish Joyce’s” (McCormick 29); instead, they described her as an idealized force of Nature, a Gaia earth-mother-goddess, suppressing her sexuality.  Once Joyce had been safely canonized, it became possible for critics in the 50s and 60s to attack Molly’s sensuality and label her a “whore,” reflecting a larger post-WWII antifeminist reaction (McCormick 29). Then, in the 70s and 80s, post-structuralists couch her “language, desire, and even her very subjectivity” as products of “her historical formation” (McCormick 33).  To be sure, you can spend years delving deeply into the scholarly lenses and debates that have sought to define Molly Bloom. I myself got a bit lost in this rabbit hole while preparing to write this episode guide, and I could have happily spent much longer weighing brilliant people’s opinions about this fascinating character.  

However, the project at hand, as always on this site, is to support you as you complete your reading of Ulysses.  I will reference various scholars’ ideas where relevant in this guide, but I intend to keep focused primarily on the text itself.

So, let’s review what we, as readers of Ulysses, know about this woman.  A 33 year old soprano of local fame, Molly Bloom has been married for 15 years to Leopold Bloom, with whom she has had two children: a daughter, Milly, who just turned 15 yesterday, and a son, Rudy, who died in infancy a decade ago.  Molly Tweedy was born and raised in Gibraltar because her father, Major Brian Tweedy, was stationed there as a soldier in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers unit of the British military. On this day, June 16th, 1904, she has had extramarital sex with Blazes Boylan, the man who is managing her upcoming concert tour of Belfast and Liverpool.  Also on this day, she received breakfast in bed from her husband and tossed a coin to a beggar. 

In The Odyssey, Penelope has waited faithfully for 20 years for her husband’s return from the Trojan War, spending the last four years or so rebuffing over 100 suitors seeking her hand in remarriage.  Under this pressure, she devises an ingenious plan to delay selecting a new husband: she claims, citing tradition and decency, that she must weave a funeral shroud for her father-in-law prior to remarrying.  She works at her loom all day, and then each night secretly unweaves her work from the previous day. Just as Penelope, in her cleverness, is a perfect match for Odysseus, we might say the same of Molly and Leopold Bloom in their shared characteristics of wantonness, sensitivity, and charity.

The “Penelope” episode consists of eight “sentences” separated by paragraph breaks.  There is no punctuation in the final version of the text, although “much of the punctuation was deleted only in the proofs, after most of her well-formed sentences had been constructed” (M. Ellmann 102).  In many ways, Molly’s flowing stream of consciousness is unique in all of literature. Joyce wrote that “Penelope has no beginning, middle or end” (Letters I 172), and he listed in the schema ∞ as the hour for this episode.  This symbol has a variety of possible meanings: it represents infinity and is an 8 lying down on its side, indicating the 8 sentences that comprise the episode while also depicting the image of Molly lying down in bed.

There’s an anecdote from the composition of “Penelope” that might support the notion of the episode lacking a beginning, middle, or end.  Robert McAlmon, an American poet and socially popular member of the 1920s expatriate community in Paris, was out drinking with Joyce one night and casually volunteered to type fifty pages of the “Penelope” episode.  In his memoir Being Geniuses Together, McAlmon explains the ordeal:

The next day he gave me the handwritten script, and his handwriting is minute and hen-scrawly; very difficult to decipher. With the script he gave me four notebooks, and throughout the script were marks in red, yellow, blue, purple, and green, referring to phrases which must be inserted from one of the notebooks. For about three pages I was painstaking, and actually retyped one page to get the insertions in the right place. After that I thought, “Molly might just as well think this or that a page or two later, or not at all,” and made the insertions wherever I happened to be typing. Years later I asked Joyce if he had noticed that I’d altered the mystic arrangement of Molly’s thought, and he said that he had, but agreed with my viewpoint. (McAlmon 119)

Funny, subversive, and revealing, McAlmon’s account suggests the absence of order or design in Molly’s soliloquy.  On this point, Maud Ellmann suggests that “‘Penelope’ is a dangerous supplement in that it undermines the sense of an ending; an opening rather than a closure” (M. Ellmann 98).

In contrast, Stanley Sultan claims that “Penelope” “has structural integrity and a meaningful development because through it, from beginning to end, Molly arrives at her attitude [...] the chapter is a debate within her mind” (Sultan 419).  She begins with a conflict (does she still love Bloom?) and, after engaging this question from innumerable angles, she reaches a resolution (Yes).  In short, then, “Penelope” has a clear beginning (question), middle (processing), and end (answer). Sultan boils this conflict/resolution down to one essential question: will Molly satisfy Bloom’s request for breakfast in bed?  

Sentence 1 

This topic (Bloom’s breakfast request) is exactly where Molly’s thoughts begin in the first sentence.  She notes that her husband “never did a thing like that before as ask to get his breakfast in bed” (18.1-2).  Something has changed. Whether Bloom has decided, in the aftermath of Molly’s extramarital escapade, that the time has come to assert himself, or whether “his request for breakfast may be just what it appears to be, an expression of fatigue after a late night” (R. Ellmann 161), the request demands Molly’s attention.

She can only recall Bloom making a similar request years ago when he was milking an illness while they lived in the City Arms hotel, where Mrs. Riordan (Dante from Portrait) also lived.  Bloom apparently sought to ingratiate himself to Mrs. Riordan in hopes of receiving something in her will, but those efforts came to naught.  Molly draws a sharp contrast between Mrs. Riordan’s sort of woman (“too much old chat in her about politics,” “down on bathingsuits and lownecks,” and “pious” (18.7-11)) and her own attitude (“let us have a bit of fun” (18.8-9)).

She admires a few of Bloom’s positive attributes: “polite to old women like that and waiters and beggars too hes not proud” (18.16-17).  But she doubles back to roll her eyes at Bloom, imagining that he would flirt with a nurse if he were to get sick and have to spend time in a hospital.  You might also note her generalizations about men as she says, “theyre so weak and puling when theyre sick they want a woman to get well” (18.23); this tendency to lump all men together will persist throughout her monologue, causing some confusion because we can’t always easily discern what man she refers to when she says “he.”  She accuses Bloom specifically of being a bit dramatic: “if his nose bleeds youd think it was O tragic” (18.24).  

She also reveals that she is aware of more than Bloom knows, including his porn stash...and the fact that “he came somewhere” (18.34) today.  Noting his appetite as evidence, she correctly deduces that her husband is not in love with this woman. She suggests that maybe he had sex with a prostitute in Nighttown and discredits Bloom’s report of the day as “a pack of lies” (18.37).  She’s more than half right in these suppositions.

We might also think of the ∞ symbol listed in the schema as depicting the pattern of Molly’s thinking: her mind circles around a topic, then, after the natural interruption of other thoughts, twists upon itself and returns to the initial thought.  Applying this idea here, Molly begins with her assumption that Bloom has had sex today, turns to considering his story of the day to be a ruse “to hide it” (18.37), is distracted by Bloom mentioning John Henry Menton, a former suitor of Molly’s, who she remembers unfavorably.  Then, she returns to the initial idea that Bloom “came somewhere” (18.34) with “one of those night women” (18.36) “or else if its not that its some little bitch or other he got in with somewhere or picked up on the sly” (18.44-45). We are able to assemble the complete thought as it circles, twists, and winds back to itself (∞) over the course of these ten lines.  That will be the case throughout the episode, but you may find reading this way to be tedious as it requires you to keep going back a few lines and re-reading as you piece the full idea together. Sorry. 

Molly recalls walking in on Bloom writing a letter and how “he covered it up with the blottingpaper pretending to be thinking about business” (18.48-49).  She correctly suspects that Bloom is corresponding with another woman (Martha Clifford), but she is mistaken in assuming that this is the woman with whom Bloom “came” today (Gerty McDowell).  She claims that “1 woman is not enough for them” (18.60) after remembering Bloom’s flirtation with Mary Driscoll, a former housekeeper whom Molly dismissed for stealing oysters (and for lying about it).  

Returning her attention to Bloom’s hypothesized sexual activity today, she notes that “the last time he came on my bottom when was it the night Boylan gave my hand a great squeeze [...] I just pressed the back of his like that with my thumb to squeeze back singing the young May moon shes beaming love” (18.77-80).  First, it is important to note that while Molly and Bloom have not had “complete carnal intercourse” (17.2278) together since Rudy died, they still have sex, but Bloom pulls out at the end. They minimize the chances of getting pregnant again for fear of losing another child. Next, the most recent occurrence of their sort of sex was over two weeks ago, the night Boylan and Molly gave each other surreptitious hand squeezes.  Bloom observed this exchange and remembered many of the same details back in “Lestrygonians”: “She was humming. The young May moon she’s beaming, love. He other side of her. Elbow, arm. He. Glowworm’s la-amp is gleaming, love. Touch. Fingers. Asking. Answer. Yes.” (8.589-91). So, Molly knows that he knows, and she knows that he stayed away from the house all day because “hes not such a fool” (18.81). Also, Molly reveals that Bloom told her “I’m dining out and going to the Gaiety” (18.81-82) in a conversation that must have occurred off-page sometime after Bloom finished his business in the outhouse at the end of “Calypso” and before he left home and we rejoin him for his errands in “Lotus-Eaters.” 

Molly contemplates seducing a young man, remembers some early encounters with men as a newcomer to Dublin, and thinks of unsatisfactory sex.  She seems to minimize her affair with Boylan, saying “its done now once and for all […] why can’t you kiss a man before going and marrying him first” (18.100-03).  Molly reveals how much she enjoys a good kiss. She thinks about confession and briefly fantasizes about embracing a priest. 

She turns her curiosity to Boylan.  She wonders whether Boylan “was satisfied with [her]” but takes offense at “his slapping [her] behind” (18.122).  She wonders if Boylan is awake right now thinking about her, or whether he’s asleep dreaming about her (actually, he might still be at Bella Cohen’s (if that was indeed him back toward the end of “Circe”)…which would answer her question regarding his satisfaction).  Molly, like the barmaid in “Sirens” (11.366), then wonders where Boylan got the red carnation “he said he bought” (18.125) - we saw him take it flirtatiously from the fruit shop back in “Wandering Rocks” (10.328).  She wonders about the drink she smelt on him (we know it was sloe gin (11.350).  It’s fun to have answers to Molly’s questions – Joyce here rewards us for our good reading. 

She thinks of the exhausting afternoon of lovemaking.  We notice the third valence of the “potted meat” (18.132): 1) a food product, 2) a buried corpse, 3) sex.  They had multiple rounds of sex – “he must have come 3 or 4 times” (18.143). Boylan is well-endowed “with that tremendous big red brute of a thing” that resembles “some kind of a thick crowbar standing” (18.144-48); indeed, Molly says “I never in all my life felt anyone had one the size of that to make you feel full up” (18.149-50); some soldiers in the Molly Wars use this line to condemn her as promiscuous.  

After hours of vigorous sex and with a belly full of food and port, Molly fell immediately to sleep after Boylan left, but she was startled awake by the loud crack of thunder that boomed around 10:00 pm, during the “Oxen” episode.  Remember that the text there described it “as the god self was angered for his hellprate and paganry” (14.411). It scares Stephen, but the men continue their carousing unabated. Molly responds appropriately: “God be merciful to us I thought the heavens were coming down about us to punish us when I blessed myself and said a Hail Mary” (18.134-36).  She is a believer, and she feels guilt, but will she, like the men in the hospital, continue her sinful behavior?

She took measures to prevent Boylan impregnating her, making him pull out each time except the last, and thinks about the unfairness of women having to bear children while men only get the fun of sex.  She considers “risk[ing]” (18.166) having another child (but not with Boylan). While she assumes Boylan would produce “a fine strong child” (18.167), she notes that “Poldy has more spunk in him” (18.168).  Point Bloom.

Molly again considers Bloom’s assumed sexual activity today and “suppose[s] it was meeting Josie Powell and the funeral and thinking about me and Boylan set him off” (18.169-70).  She knows that Josie Powell (now Breen) and Bloom “were spooning a bit when I came on the scene” (18.171), and she wonders if maybe they are now rekindling that old flame behind her back.  Molly has confidence, however, that she could easily win Bloom back: a light touch with her gloves on and “1 kiss then would send them all spinning” (18.190-91) out of Bloom’s mind.   

We get a brief snippet of a political argument they had years ago where it seems Bloom cited Jesus as “the first socialist” (18.178).

She remembers the early period of her relationship with Bloom and how “he was very handsome at that time trying to look like Lord Byron […] though he was too beautiful for a man” (18.208-10).  You might think here about Weineger’s theory, a popular turn-of-the-century notion regarding gender gradience. Molly returns to thinking about Josie and how she would, under the guise of friendship, “make her mouth water” (18.216) with details about Bloom.  Josie kept her distance after the Blooms married. She compares Josie’s “dotty husband of hers” (18.218), Dennis Breen, who “used to go to bed with his muddy boots on” (18.222-23) to Bloom, who “always wipes his feet on the mat” (18.226). She claims she would “rather die 20 times over than marry another of their sex” (18.231-32), which we can read either as a condemnation of all males or a recognition that Bloom is the only man for her.  She feels that “hed never find another woman like me to put up with him the way I do” (18.232-33): not exactly gushy, but it is a nicer picture of a happy couple than the stuff that concludes the episode’s first sentence about Mrs. Maybrick (a wife who poisoned her husband because she was in love with another man). 

Sentence 2

Despite Molly’s generalizations about men, she begins the second sentence by recognizing that “theyre all so different” (18.246) in their tastes and fixations.  Apparently, Boylan has a foot fetish. She recalls their first encounter at the D. B. C. (Dublin Bread Company), how Boylan stared at her feet, and how her outfit that day made it difficult to use the restroom.  She left her suede gloves in the women’s room there. She plans to “stick” (18.261) Boylan for a birthstone ring and a gold bracelet.  She recalls some of Bloom’s “not natural” (18.268) requests involving stockings and boots. 

Then, Molly delves into the memory of her fling with Bartell d’Arcy, a tenor who kissed her (and perhaps did more with her…it isn’t entirely clear).  Bloom lists d’Arcy as one of Molly’s suitors back in “Ithaca” and thinks of him earlier in the day: “Bartell d’Arcy was the tenor, just coming out then. Seeing her home after practice. Conceited fellow with his waxedup moustache” (8.181-82).  Molly suggests that she will tell Bloom about d’Arcy someday and “show him the very place too we did it” (18.280-81)…again, we don’t know exactly what “it” refers to here, but there’s a spiteful tone in this thought. She notes that “he thinks nothing can happen without him knowing” (18.281-82), which we will see is untrue in the case of Gardner, but perhaps not in the case of d’Arcy.     

Molly teases that “he hadnt an idea about my mother till we were engaged” (18.282-83), introducing Molly’s mom as one of the episode’s mysteries; we know a thing or two about Molly’s dad, Major Brian Tweedy, but knowledge of her mother,  “whoever she was” (18.846), is shadowy. Later in the episode, we learn that her name was Lunita Laredo (18.848) and that Molly got her “eyes and figure” (18.890-91) from her. We also learn that Molly is “jewess looking after [her] mother” (18.1184-85). If Molly’s mom was Jewish, that would make her more of a Jew than Bloom due to the Jewish tradition of matrilineal descent. Huh.

She thinks about Bloom’s thing for ladies’ undergarments and how he can’t help himself from looking, as we have seen throughout the day.  Molly then recalls an early encounter with suave Bloom “looking slyboots” (18.296-97) in a new raincoat, a brown hat, and a brightly colored scarf “to show off his complexion” (18.296) - she seems to appreciate his sense of style here.  While perhaps simultaneously aroused and weirded out as she satisfies Bloom’s thing for drawers early in their courtship, she finds his “splendid set of teeth” (18.307) attractive and was “dying to find out was he circumcised” (18.313-14).  She condemns Bloom as a “Deceiver” (18.318) because he suggested she lie to her father in order to stay out later with him, but she then remembers the love letters Bloom wrote her, and she “liked the way he made love” (18.328)… her attitude toward Bloom is mercurial.  Clearly, she is processing what she currently thinks of him and how she wants to proceed with the relationship.   

She appreciates Bloom’s talent for kissing, but she compares him unfavorably to the way a man named Gardner embraced her.  This guy, Gardner, does not appear in Bloom’s list of suitors, and Molly seems to have had a serious affair with him relatively recently. Gardner will appear in her thoughts again later, where we learn that “he left for the Boer War, so [their relationship] had to be 1899 or thereafter [and] Bloom knows nothing of him. […] Joyce here deliberately introduces a theme of mystery, faintly analogous to his use of the man in the macintosh, to keep us uncertain about Molly’s sexual background” (Boyle 414-15).

She shifts her focus back to Boylan, hoping “hell come on Monday” (18.332).  She reflects on the day, admitting that she was nervous that Boylan was going to stand her up.  She clarifies that it was indeed her arm back in “Wandering Rocks” that threw a coin down to the begging one-legged sailor.  She thinks ahead a week to the trip to Belfast and is grateful that Bloom can’t come along (due to his trip to Ennis in honor of the anniversary of his father’s death) because he would complicate the affair in an ironic way: Boylan might get upset if “any fooling went on” (18.351) between Bloom and Molly.  She is also glad not to travel with Bloom because he does awkward stuff like the time he ordered soup at a train station and then sloshed it while eating it as he walked down the platform and made a scene refusing to pay the waiter until he finished it. She wonders if Boylan will pay for them to travel in first class and whether he will want to have sex on the train.  She ponders “elop[ing]” (18.373) with Boylan. 

After thinking about Bloom’s problematic associations with the Freemasons and Sinn Fein, Molly thinks again about her lover Stanley Gardner and their “hot” (18.393) kiss goodbye as he left for South Africa to fight in the Boer War; Gardner died of fever and didn’t return from the war.  

Her thoughts return to Boylan, whose “father made his money over selling the horses for the cavalry” (18.403), a rumor we also heard back in the “Cyclops” episode.  She anticipates that Boylan “could buy me a nice present up in Belfast after what I gave him” (18.404), which at least hints of prostitution. She plans to take off her wedding ring for the trip in order to avoid press or police trouble.  She contemplates the ergonomics of intercourse with Boylan and appreciates his expensive sense of style. She recalls Boylan’s angry fit over losing £20 in the Gold Cup because he followed the tip given by Lenehan, who Molly remembers “making free with [her] after the Glencree dinner” (18.427) in starkly different terms than Lenehan himself recalled the encounter back in “Wandering Rocks” (10.551-77).  She notes another suitor, Val Dillon.

But back to the Gold Cup for a moment.  Stanley Sultan reads it as an analogy: Throwaway is Bloom (the dark horse outsider) competing against Sceptre/Boylan (the phallic favorite) (Sultan 434).  In Sultan’s reading, Boylan/Sceptre never had a chance of winning the race for Molly because cuckolding Bloom has only pricked the side of the rightful husband to change the dynamics of the relationship, giving him impetus to abandon his passivity and his craving for forgiveness over the death of Rudy and instead prompting Bloom’s “endeavor to win back his wife” (Sultan 435).  In other words, having been cuckolded, Bloom now feels empowered to assert himself as Molly’s husband in a way that she will find attractive, and Molly will again choose Bloom over any number of other suitors, including Blazes Boylan.

Still, she begins her mental packing list for the trip with Boylan, which apparently won’t need to include many pairs of underwear (per Boylan’s preference).  She plans to buy a new corset and considers cutting out “the stout at dinner” because her “belly is a bit too big” (18.450) but doesn’t want to “overdo it the thin ones are not so much the fashion” (18.456).  She thinks about soft skin and wonders if Bloom got her lotion made up at Sweny’s (we know he did but forgot to pick it up). She complains that she has “no clothes at all” (18.470).

She mistakes her age, saying she will “be 33 in September” (18.475) when she will in fact turn 34.  (I myself have had a hard time remembering how old I am throughout my 30s...the difference between 33 and 38 feels negligible.)  She weighs examples of age and beauty and recalls an apocryphal story involving a chastity belt and an oyster knife. She considers censorship bullshit.  The size of baby Jesus in nativity scenes is out of scale.

Molly turns her focus to Bloom’s career, taking a dim view of his work as an advertising agent and wishing he’d take an office job “where hed get regular pay” (18.505).  She again questions his masculinity, “wish[ing] hed even smoke a pipe like father to get the smell of a man” (18.508-09) and thinks about women’s fashion in clothing and hats.  She laments that Bloom lost his job with Cuffe’s cattle traders and recounts her efforts to get him reinstated, which were unsuccessful despite Mr. Cuffe “looking very hard at [her] chest” (18.529).  

Sentence 3

Molly’s breasts remain her focus as she begins the third sentence of the soliloquy, describing their featured role in the tryst with Boylan.  She compares the beauty of the female form to the male “two bags full and his other thing hanging down” (18.542-43) - hard to argue with Molly here.  She reveals that Bloom suggested that she “could pose for a picture naked” (18.560) when he was unemployed and they were strapped for cash. Yikes.

She recaps the morning (Bloom’s unsuccessful teaching of “met something with hoses” (18.665) (metempsychosis) and burning of the pan) before turning attention back to her breasts, their ample provision of milk, and Bloom’s desire to “milk [her] into the tea” (18.578).  Pretty weird, even for Bloom.

Molly thinks about the sex she had with Boylan, and it seems like she enjoyed his roughness at least as a novelty.  That said, she seems ultimately not to prefer Boylan’s style of lovemaking, saying “theyre not all like him thank God” (18.591); however, she does tick off the days until their next planned encounter, silently exclaiming “O Lord I cant wait till Monday” (18.595).  Her attitude is difficult to decipher, for sure.

Sentence 4

The fourth sentence begins with an onomatopoeia of a train whistle in the distance (one of very few intrusions into Molly’s thoughts from the physical world).  She intends to continue decluttering the house and thinks the rain that fell around 10:30 pm “was lovely and refreshing” (18.606).

Her thoughts turn to Gibraltar, where she spent her childhood, and recalls the heat, sun, and dramatic geography of the rock.  She considers the Spanish bullfights brutal and notes the impracticality of women’s clothing. Central to this sentence, Molly fondly remembers her close childhood friendship with Hester Stanhope.  With the exception of Hester and the Dillon sisters, Molly seems to have had very few female friends in her life. Hester taught her how to do her hair and comforted her in a storm. Molly mentally reproduces the text of a postcard she received from Hester after she left Gibraltar with her husband, whom Hester called “wogger” (18.624).  Molly notes that Mr. Stanhope “was awfully fond of me” (18.624) and “was attractive to a girl in spite of his being a little bald intelligent looking disappointed and gay at the same time” (18.648-49). She recalls an occasion when their “eyes met [she] felt something go through [her] like all needles” (18.646); while she lost sleep over the excitement of this experience of sexual awakening, she refrains from participating in this love triangle because “it wouldnt have been nice on account of her” (18.651-52).  Molly’s loyalty to Hester speaks to her character and throws the events of this afternoon into relief.  

The physical world intrudes as she adjusts the heavy blanket and recalls her shift getting “drenched with the sweat stuck in the cheeks of my bottom on the chair” (18.662-63) and how muggy and buggy the air was in Gibraltar.

Molly then recalls Hester’s emotional farewell and how her life in Gibraltar “got as dull as the devil after they went” (18.676) with only cannons, guns, and soldiers.  She was so lonely and bored that she sent herself letters “with bits of paper in them” (18.699), which she compares to her boredom now. Molly questions the alleged superior intelligence of men and then returns to the topic of letters, noting that Milly sent a letter to Bloom but only a card to her.  The last letter she received was from her old friend Floey Dillon (now Mrs. Dwenn), who was writing from Canada to ask for a recipe and to boast of her marriage to a “very rich architect [...] with a villa and eight rooms” (18.721). Molly remembers Floey’s father, Mat Dillon, as “an awfully nice man” (18.722); he is listed in “Ithaca” as one of Molly’s suitors.  In an honest appraisal of her own lack of sympathy, Molly dislikes hearing other people’s “poor story” (18.725); indeed, she has always struggled even to spell the word “symphathy” (18.730) correctly. 

She returns to the topic of letters, hoping Boylan will write “a longer letter the next time” because the one he sent this morning “wasnt much” (18.731, 735).  She is clearly affected by textual correspondence, asserting that a good letter “fills up your whole day and life always something to think about every moment and see it all round you like a new world” (18.738-39).  Interesting here to note (no pun intended) the role letters play in Bloom/Henry Flower’s day. In a statement revealing her loneliness, Molly “wish[es] somebody would write [her] a loveletter” (18.731), and she ends this sentence with a fairly dark opinion that “as for being a woman as soon as youre old they might as well throw you out in the bottom of the ashpit” (18.746-7).  

Notice that Bloom is not directly mentioned or thought about in the entirety of the fourth sentence. 

Sentence 5

The fifth sentence continues the focus on letters and returns to memories of Gibraltar, recalling that “Mulveys was the first” (18.748) love letter she received; she treasured this secret admirer note, keeping it “inside [her] petticoat bodice all day reading it up in every hole and corner” (18.765-66).  This man, Lieutenant Mulvey, was also her first kiss and perhaps her first love. She teased him, telling him that she was engaged to “the son of a Spanish nobleman named Don Miguel de la Flora” (18.773-74), and she appreciates the coincidence of her eventual marriage to a man named Bloom (like flora). She also kinda bashes her Spanish housekeeper, Mrs. Rubio.

Molly vividly remembers these first sexual experiences with Mulvey.  While they came close to having intercourse, she refrained for fear that he would “leave [her] with a child” (18.801-02); she gave him a hand job instead.  She thinks about the vagina. She also thinks about the penis. She wonders whether Mulvey is “dead or killed or a captain or admiral [...] perhaps hes married” (18.823, 826).  She zigzags through gender tropes, first affirming women’s superior consistency of character, then taking pleasure that Mulvey’s hypothetical wife “little knows what I did with her beloved husband before he ever dreamt of her” (18.827-28), then dismissing a Bishop’s sermon on “womans higher functions” (18.838).

Molly pivots from Mulvey to Bloom, expressing her preference for the name Bloom over a variety of other names.  That positivity toward Bloom is short-lived, though, as she thinks, “or suppose I divorced him Mrs Boylan” (18.846). 

She returns to memories of Mulvey and the gold/opal/pearl ring he gave her before departing for India.  She, in turn, gave this ring to Gardner as he left for the Boer War, where he died. She notes that Mulvey was clean shaven whereas Gardner had a mustache and then hears the train again in the distance.

Molly dismisses Kathleen Kearney (from the Dubliners story “A Mother”) and other women as a “lot of sparrowfarts skitting around” (18.879).  We might again note that she doesn’t currently seem to have many (if any) female friends.  She is proud of being an army brat, she is confident in her physical appearance, she asserts that she “knew more about men and life when [she] was 15 than theyll all know at 50” (18.886-87), and she is, after all, a talented singer.  In evidence of these boasts, she thinks of her English paramour Gardner’s fixation on “her mouth and teeth smiling” (18.888) and her “lips” (18.892). Then her competitive attitude toward other women reaches its pinnacle: “let them get a husband first thats fit to be looked at and a daughter like mine or see if they can excite a swell with money that can pick and choose whoever he wants like Boylan to do it 4 or 5 times locked in each others arms or the voice either” (18.892-96).  She is proud of Bloom, Milly, and Boylan as monuments to her superiority over other Dublin women.

She thinks of the program and her attire/accessories for the upcoming concert tour, feels an itchiness down below, and then eases out a fart slowly so as not to wake Bloom (whose head, remember, is by her bottom).  The fifth sentence ends with the negative thought that she “wish[es] hed sleep in some bed by himself with his cold feet on me give us room even to let a fart God” (18.905-06). If you are charting her attitude toward Bloom, we are in a downslope.

Sentence 6

The sixth sentence opens with a few concerns: was the pork chop she ate spoiled?  Is the lamp smoking? She also expresses recurrent anxiety about leaving the gas on.  She remembers a particularly cold winter back in Gibraltar. Realizing that she’s not going to fall back to sleep, Molly expresses some measure of loving concern for her husband, hoping “hes not going to get in with those medicals leading him astray,” yet her derisive next phrase, “to imagine hes young again,” complicates that concern (18.925-26).  In this same way, Molly appreciates Bloom’s “manners” (18.927) in not waking her when he came in, but she shakes her head at men staying out late drinking. As you’ve surely figured out by now, Joyce is never going to make anything straightforward.

For the first time since the very beginning of her monologue, Molly returns to Bloom’s request for breakfast in bed, and, by characterizing it as Bloom “giving us his orders [...] like the king of the country” (18.930-31), she seems resentful.  As previously mentioned, Stanley Sultan identifies “a close correspondence between the status of his request [for breakfast in bed] at any point in the soliloquy and his own standing in her eyes, an indication that the matter of his breakfast is at least related to her attitude toward him” (Sultan 420).  Her flush of irritation recedes, leaving first bemusement (“pumping the wrong end of the spoon up and down in his egg wherever he learned that from” (18. 932-33) and then endearment (“I love to hear him falling up the stairs of a morning with the cups rattling on the tray” (18.933-34). Notwithstanding the initial negative tone of the thought, these relatively quick shifts in attitude leading eventually to “love” seem promising.

Molly expresses curiosity about their cat, echoing Bloom’s thoughts at the outset of the “Calypso” episode.  She considers buying some fish today (now Friday), and then imagines a picnic with Boylan and Bloom and “some other woman for him who Mrs Fleming” (18.947).  Mrs. Fleming is the old woman who helps around the Bloom house; she cleans, darns socks, etc., and she isn’t particularly good at her job. Assuming Molly intends Boylan for herself and Mrs. Fleming for Bloom, the positivity from the previous thought has faded.  She thinks about Bloom’s bee sting on Whit Monday (May 23, 1904), and then expresses her annoyance with him about posing as a competent boatman, nearly leading to them capsizing. You wouldn’t want to be on that boat yourself, but a wife fussing at a clumsy husband in a rowboat strikes a funny image.  Less funny, she thinks that she should “flagellate [Bloom] till he was black and blue do him all the good in the world” (18.963)...little does she know how much Bloom might agree (if we accept his fantasies in “Circe” as genuine).  

She thinks poorly of Pisser Burke (from “Cyclops”) and wonders about Sweets of Sin, the book Bloom bought for her back in “Wandering Rocks.”  She doesn’t like tall men, she forgot to bring salt for good luck into 7 Eccles when they moved, and she expresses some fear of “being alone in this big barracks of a place at night” (18.978).  This thought continues, worrying over Bloom leaving her home alone all day and a beggar/tramp “put[ting] his foot in the way to prevent” Molly from shutting the door on him (18.989-92). She supports capital punishment.  She has low confidence in Bloom’s ability to protect her against a burglar or assailant, but he’s “still better than nothing” (18.999).  

Interrupting this thought, she expresses little faith in Bloom’s various grand plans.  She first rejects the idea to turn their spare room into “Blooms private hotel” (18.981), especially since Bloom’s father undertook a similar venture down in Ennis.  She calls B.S. on all the promises Bloom made to her and her father during their courtship regarding livelihood and international travel.  

Molly turns her focus to Milly, contending that Bloom sent her to learn the photography business in Mullingar to get her out of the house “on account of me and Boylan thats why he did it Im certain the way he plots and plans everything out” (18.1007-09).  Milly was thriving academically and socially in Dublin, but she was getting in Molly’s space a bit before she left. Molly takes a cynical view of Milly’s relationship with Bloom, assuming Milly is only “pretending” and being “sly” (18.1018-19). Molly asserts that Milly would come to her for help rather than Bloom “if there was anything wrong with her” (18.1021).  Molly comments on Milly’s popularity and conveys some mother-daughter tension over attire and posture. She thinks about sex, claiming that she “never came properly till [she] was what 22 or so it went into the wrong place” (18.1051). Important to note that she married Bloom when she was 18 years old. She considers the rarity of “real love” (18.1056) and attributes Bloom’s father’s suicide to him feeling lost after his wife died.  Molly notes that Milly knows “shes pretty with her lips so red” (18.1065-66), but Molly gave her “2 damn fine cracks across the ear” (18.1070-71) for avoiding her parents at a major Dublin social event. Superstitious Molly also got angry with Milly for “leav[ing] knives crossed” (18.1075). She blames Bloom for not being more firm with Milly and for not hiring a “proper servant” (18.1080).

She links Bloom bringing home a stray dog to him bringing home Stephen Dedalus last night.  She mocks Simon Dedalus’s pretension: he wears a “tall hat” but has a “great big hole in his sock” (18.1089).  She scoffs at Bloom climbing over the railing due to not having the key and thinks about them in “the dirty old kitchen” (18.1094).  She sighs that “shes going such as she was on account of her paralysed husband getting worse” (18.1099-100) - I think this refers to Mrs. Fleming leaving the job, but I’m not entirely sure.

For those readers wishing the prose of “Penelope” had periods, Molly has hers.  She is annoyed by this, especially since it will likely disrupt her plans with Boylan on Monday afternoon.  Scholars have different readings of the onset of Molly’s period. Practically, it “makes it impossible that her intercourse with Boylan will have any consequences [and] significantly alters the tone of her discourse and modifies her relationship first to Boylan and then to Bloom” (Hayman 127).  Metaphorically, “in allowing Molly to menstruate at the end Joyce consecrates the blood in the chamberpot rather than the blood in the chalice [...] The great human potentiality is substantiation, not transubstantiation [...] he [Joyce the artist] produces living human characters, not ethereal ones.  It is human blood, not divine” (R. Ellmann 171).

In addition to confirming that Boylan did not impregnate Molly, the arrival of her period “symbolizes as well the end of a cycle of much greater duration” (Sultan 439), meaning the cycle of Bloom’s desire for forgiveness over the death of Rudy and Molly’s desire for a more assertive husband.

She recalls having her period begin one night while in a box at the Gaiety Theater with a “gentleman of fashion staring down at me with his glasses” (18.1113-14); this guy appeared in Bloom’s list of suitors.  She counts menstruation among other problems of womanhood, “clothes and cooking and children” (18.1130).

Molly’s final thoughts of the 6th sentence refocus on the afternoon with Boylan.  The word “jingling,” which in “Sirens” signified Boylan’s travelling to 7 Eccles in a jaunting car, here describes the noise made by the loose quoits of the bed as they had sex.  She prefers having sex in the afternoon, thinking “is it nicer in the day I think it is” (18.1133).  Molly worries if she was “too heavy sitting on his knee” (18.1138) and whether her “breath was sweet after those kissing comfits” (18.1140-41), but she is confident “he never saw a better pair of thighs” (18.1144-45).  She expresses that she “wouldnt mind being a man and get up on a lovely woman” (18.1146-47). Huh.

Sentence 7

The seventh sentence opens with Molly’s past and present gynecological concerns plus reviews of various doctors.  She remembers the “mad crazy letters” Bloom wrote her early in their relationship, saying that they aroused her to the point that “he had me always at myself 4 and 5 times a day sometimes” (18.1176, 1179).  She remembers “the first night ever we met [...] we stood staring at one another for about 10 minutes as if we met somewhere” (18.1182-84). Seems like love at first sight.  

She recalls Bloom’s political positions in favor of home rule; it seems he was eloquent and presentable enough for some people to suggest “he was going to stand for a member of parliament” (18.1186-87).  She notes Bloom’s various odd habits, including him “sleeping at the foot of the bed” (18.1199) and recalls them visiting the National Museum together to see a statue of a Hindu god. Noticing that Bloom is “sleeping hard” (18.1208), Molly assumes that he visited a prostitute.  She doesn’t initially seem particularly bothered by this thought, but she later determines to “knock him off that little habit” (18.1234).  

She catalogues their many addresses over the course of their marriage and seems frustrated that Bloom is unbothered by being repeatedly “on the run” (18.1218).  She also lists his jumpy employment history (see Bloom’s CV) as well as various reasons for his trouble: selling Hungarian “old lottery tickets” and associations with “Sinner Fein or the freemasons” (18.1225, 1227).

The peal of St. George’s church bells signifies that it’s 2:45 am, “a nice hour of the night for him to be coming home at” (18.1232-33).  She condemns all men as “deceitful” (18.1236) and thinks “they ought to get slow poison the half of them” (18.1243). On this negative thought, her mind returns to Bloom’s request for breakfast: “tea and toast for him buttered on both sides and newlaid eggs I suppose Im nothing any more” (18.1243-44).  If breakfast is the bellwether for the marriage, it doesn’t look good at the moment.

She rebuffed Bloom’s desire to perform oral sex on her because “he does it all wrong” (18.1249), causing Bloom to pout.  She wonders if, rather than seeing a prostitute, maybe Bloom had sex with Josie…“no hed never have the courage with a married woman” (18.1253-54).  Instead, she decides “yes its some little bitch hes got in with” (18.1256) and recalls catching Bloom “throwing his sheeps eyes” (18.1259) flirtatiously at two young attractive women.

She thinks about Dignam’s funeral, offering brief, scathing commentary on each attendee.  Just as you may have felt protective of Bloom when he was among this cohort of men earlier in the novel, Molly states “theyre not going to get my husband again into their clutches if I can help it making fun of him then behind his back” (18.1275-77).  Setting Bloom apart from these “goodfornothings” (18.1279), she commends Bloom for his moderation and responsibility. Along these lines, she worries about the Dignams.

She recalls the night Ben Dollard borrowed a too-tight tux from the Blooms’ secondhand clothing and costume shop - remember that this event was recounted twice in “Sirens.”  She knocks Simon Dedalus for being often drunk and singing the wrong verse, but she affirms that he had “a delicious glorious voice” (18.1294). She remembers performing with Simon, notes that he is now a widower, and wonders about his son, Stephen, from whom she is apparently going to receive Italian lessons.  

She recalls previous encounters with Stephen.  First, 11 years ago, while she was mourning the death of Rudy, Molly saw preteen Stephen with his parents; interesting that she initially links Stephen to Rudy, just as Bloom has done.  She remembers seeing Stephen when he was younger, too, at Mat Dillon’s, where Bloom also met him (as we know from “Ithaca” (17.467)). The difference, of course, is that Stephen shyly refused to shake Bloom’s hand, whereas Molly claims that young Stephen “liked me”...but, then again, “they all do” (18.1313).  

Then, Molly realizes that Stephen appeared in her tarot cards this morning: “union with young stranger neither dark nor fair you met before” (18.1315).  She had initially misinterpreted this stranger to be Boylan, but now she realizes it meant Stephen; Stephen is replacing Boylan in her mind, just as Bloom had designed.  She also had a dream involving poetry. Wondering whether she is “too old for him” (13.1328), she tries to figure out Stephen’s age (and comes within a year or two). She imagines becoming Stephen’s muse and prefers the idea of speaking with Stephen over hearing Bloom talk about ads.  She conflates Stephen with a nude statue and contemplates fellatio, idealizing Stephen as “so clean compared with those pigs of men” (18.1356)...we know from “Ithaca” that Stephen hasn’t bathed in eight months. She is very attracted to the idea of seducing Stephen and plans to use her tarot cards again in the morning to see if he appears again.  She intends to learn enough poetry to impress Stephen and plans to expand his horizons sexually. The seventh sentence concludes with her imagining the scandal an affair with Stephen would cause.

Sentence 8

In a signal that Molly’s mental processing has led finally to a rejection of Boylan, the eighth and final sentence opens with five uses of the word “no” (18.1368).  Not only is Boylan an “ignoramus that doesnt know poetry from a cabbage” (18.1370-71) (and therefore inferior to Stephen), but he also has “no manners” (18.1368) (and is therefore inferior to Bloom).  Molly also amplifies the umbrage she expressed in the first sentence at Boylan “slapping us behind” (18.122, 1369). In short, Boylan is “vulgar” (13.1373). As Molly has exhaustively weighed Bloom’s many failings and virtues, she is realizing that “as compared with Boylan, her husband is the more complete man” (R. Ellmann 166-67).

She reprises her attraction to the female figure and her jealousy over “the amount of pleasure [men] get off a womans body” (18.1380).  In a Weiningerian moment, she says “I wished I was [a man] myself for a change” (18.1381). She attacks double standards, decides “theyre not going to be chaining [her] up” (18.1391), and claims that her desires are natural and she “cant help it if [she’s] young still” (18.1398-99).  

She expresses frustration that Bloom doesn’t embrace her often enough, and she doesn’t like him kissing her bottom.  In a wonderfully ambivalent line, she calls Bloom “a madman nobody understands his cracked ideas but me” (18.1406-07).  Sure, he’s kind of an odd guy, but she’s the only one who understands him; the depth of their connection, in my reading, outweighs her annoyance at his quirks.  But then she goes back to her desire to be embraced and fantasizes that she might “pick up a sailor off the sea” (18.1411-12), although she does worry about being assaulted or picking up an STD.  She recalls catching a man just leaving a “filthy prostitute” (18.1424). She thinks again of her tarot cards from this morning and how Bloom appeared “in some perplexity” and “in prison” (18.1429-30), which feels accurate to the day we spent with him.  She circles back indignantly to the prospect of “slooching around down in the kitchen to get his lordship his breakfast” (18.1431-32) and scoffs “will I indeed” (18.1432). That’s the big question. Indeed, will she?

She aligns herself with difference feminism in the vein of Mary Daly, arguing that “itd be much better for the world to be governed by the women in it” (18.1434-5), highlighting the importance of motherhood (and suggesting, rather insightfully, that the death of Stephen’s mother is the reason “hes running wild now” (18.1442).  Thoughts of Stephen again bring her to their own lack of a son, the death of Rudy, and the impact of that loss on the marriage. Echoing Bloom’s thoughts back in “Lestrygonians” (8.608-12), she thinks “we were never the same since” (18.1450). She sandwiches these thoughts about Rudy between thoughts about Stephen, reframing the young man as an object of maternal instincts rather than one of sexual desire.

She envies Bloom’s ability, as a man, to go out and “have friends,” attributing her own lack of friendships to the fact that women generally are “a dreadful lot of bitches” (18.1456, 1459), adding to the problem of reading Molly as a feminist.  She thinks about the Spanish language, Gibraltar, and the idea of Stephen living in Milly’s now vacant room. She considers getting “red slippers like those Turks” (18.1495), unwittingly realizing Bloom’s dream remembered back at the end of “Nausicaa”: “Dreamt last night? Wait. Something confused. She had red slippers on. Turkish” (13.1240-41).  

This willingness to fulfill Bloom’s dream leads to her final decision regarding Bloom’s request for breakfast: “Ill get up early in the morning [...] I might go over to the markets [...] Ill throw him up his eggs and tea in the moustachecup [...] I suppose he’d like my nice cream too” (18.1498-1506).  Not only will she accede to Bloom’s request, she’ll run errands for him and give him something special of her own. “Furthermore, she accepts the implications of her compliance, that getting his breakfast is giving him ‘one more chance’ to be her proper husband” (Sultan 443). Hooray! All’s well!

Not so fast.  She will leave “the mark of [Boylan’s] spunk on the clean sheet” (18.1512), she claims “its all [Bloom’s] own fault if I am an adulteress” (18.1516), and she threatens to “bulge [her bottom] right out in his face” (18.1521).  All is not well.

Forgetting her period for a moment, she imagines having sex with Bloom.  She plans for Stephen coming by and imagines singing and playing piano with him.  Then, flowers and nature fill her mind.

She vividly recalls Bloom’s marriage proposal on Howth Head, echoing so many of the details in Bloom’s own recollection back in “Lestrygonians” (8.900-16) but adding Bloom’s lovely wooing words.  Complicated as ever, Molly “liked him because [she] saw he understood or felt what a woman is and [she] knew she could always get round him” (18.1578-80). She thinks of other men and Gibraltar in the midst of Bloom’s proposal.  She thinks of her first kiss with Mulvey and then focuses entirely on Bloom as her thoughts round to a close. As Sultan states, “with his absorption of Mulvey in the intensity of her memory of their early love, Bloom stands alone in Molly’s thoughts at the conclusion of her soliloquy” (Sultan 448).

Molly’s first spoken word in Ulysses is an obscure “no” all the way back in “Calypso,” but, in a shower of 19 yesses in the final 35 lines, she gets the final word on Bloomsday: a wholehearted, unequivocal, capital “Y” “Yes.”  

Whether you feel uplifted or downcast at the conclusion of Molly’s soliloquy, you can take solace in the notion that if you don’t like the ending, all you have to do is read the book again and it’ll be different.  

I’ve completed at least 15 readings of this novel, and the ending elicits a different emotional response each time.  Reading “Penelope” and writing about it for you now, I feel joy and fulfillment in the remote hope that you have come to share my love for this book and its representation of the beautiful complexity of human life.

Works Cited

Boyle, Fr. Robert. “Penelope.” James Joyce's Ulysses: Critical Essays. Edited by Clive Hart 

and David Hayman. University of California Press, 2002.

Callow, Heather Cook. “Joyce’s Female Voices in Ulysses.” The Journal of Narrative 

Technique, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 151-63.  

Chabon, Michael. “‘Ulysses’ on Trial.” The New York Review of Books. 26 Sept. 26 2019. pp. 4-8.

Ellmann, Maud. “‘Penelope’ Without The Body.” European Joyce Studies, vol. 17, "Penelope" and the

Body. Brill, 2006, pp. 97-108.  

Ellmann, Richard. Ulysses on the Liffey. Oxford University Press, 1978.

Herring, Phillip F. “The Beadsteadfastness of Molly Bloom.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 15, no. 1,

James Joyce Special Number. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969. pp. 49-61.

Joyce, James. Letters of James Joyce: Volume I. Edited by Stuart Gilbert. Viking Press, 1966.

Lawrence, Karen R.  Who’s Afraid of James Joyce? University Press of Florida, 2010.

McAlmon, Robert, and Kay Boyle. Being Geniuses Together 1920 - 1930. Johns Hopkins University

Press, 1997.

McCormick, Kathleen.  “Reproducing Molly Bloom: A Revisionist History of the Reception of

‘Penelope,’ 1922-1970.  Molly Blooms: A Polylogue on “Penelope” and Cultural Studies. Edited by

Richard Pearce. University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.

Sultan, Stanley. The Argument of Ulysses. Wesleyan University Press, 1987.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today. Garland Publishing, Inc. New York: 1999.