Indeed, Molly Bloom herself visited Joyce in dreams, castigating him for “meddling” in her business (Lawrence 72).

Many felt that Joyce had misunderstood and misrepresented the female mind and perspective. 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. A friend of Joyce’s named Mary Colum denounced “Penelope,” calling it “an exhibition of the mind of a female gorilla” (qtd. Its obscenity contributed to Ulysses being banned in the English-speaking world for over a decade after its initial publication in 1922. Lawrence described the episode as “the dirtiest, most indecent, obscene thing ever written” (qtd.

Some readers of “Penelope” will find Molly offensive. 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. Sure enough, we can spend eternity reading this novel and this episode in particular, experiencing the text differently each time. Joyce referred to Molly’s monologue in “Penelope” as “the indispensable countersign to Bloom’s passport to eternity” ( Letters I 160). 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. 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.

Penelope ulysses