The Penelope Episode of Ulysses presents a full picture of Molly Bloom, one told through her own sleepy thoughts. In "Penelope," Molly emerges as a thoroughly real person: freely accepting her sexual self, jealous of other women, sometimes melancholic, demanding when dealing with a lover, and completely knowledgeable about her husband's eccentricities.
Yet Molly is also a symbolic figure, and her characterization in the entire novel contains several tiers of meaning. Molly is, first of all, an embodiment of archetypal womanhood. She reminds the reader of the Pagan Mary whom Stephen saw standing in the water at the close of Book Four of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. At that point, Stephen resisted the temptation offered by a fully sensual but limiting person — that is, someone who might comfort him with her flesh but divert him from pursuing the more intellectual goal of becoming an independent writer. In A Portrait, Stephen's "dream girl" had traits of a mermaid, as a trail of seaweed fastened itself upon her body. Molly, too, is both a mermaid and in "Calypso," she is a symbol of the enchantress who kept Odysseus away from Ithaca for several years. Molly's retort to Bloom's definition of "metempsychosis": "O, rocks!" establishes her as a siren (Molly is of course a concert singer) whose song may well lead mariners to deadly shoals. Also typifying her universal womanhood is her menstruation, which links her with Milly Bloom and Martha Clifford. Again, Molly's image as woman-temptress is seen in the role of Kitty O'Shea, who was instrumental in causing Parnell's downfall: like Molly, the wife of Captain O'Shea was a "fine lump of a woman"; and, as did Parnell, Bloom is now struggling to establish Home Rule, not so much political independence for Ireland as sovereignty for himself at 7 Eccles St. Finally, Molly has all the elements of the Blooms' mysterious, enigmatic cat, who warmly stretches itself in the Blooms' house and is reluctant (as Molly seems to be) to leave the building. When Bloom wonders why mice don't scream when being devoured by cats, he may well be thinking of his own situation.
