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. In “Penelope,” the tables are turned, and the reader gets to see Bloom through Molly’s eyes. While she is absolutely central to his life and world, she hasn’t been able to speak for herself until now. So far, Molly has only appeared in the novel through Leopold Bloom’s eyes. After the impersonal, objective style of “Ithaca,” Molly Bloom’s complicated, passionate soliloquy can be shocking and difficult to follow. This episode is Joyce’s most radical attempt to capture the human stream of consciousness in Ulysses. 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. 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. In the Odyssey, Penelope is Odysseus’s wife.
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