Another intriguing and major trait of Molly Bloom is her jealousy, her scorn of other women. She criticizes Mrs. Riordan (Stephen's tutor in A Portrait) for leaving money to have prayers said for the repose of her soul, instead of making a small bequest to the Blooms, who had befriended her. In addition, Molly fired the Blooms' maid, Mary Driscoll, on a fictitious charge of stealing oysters — simply because Bloom had taken a fancy to the girl. And Molly is still jealous of Bloom's old flame, Josie Powell, whom she thinks Bloom may have met at Dignam's funeral, and she makes up reasons for her feeling fortunate to have Bloom as a husband instead of her being married to the lunatic Denis Breen, whom Josie married. She has heard that Breen goes to bed in muddy boots, and she knows that he is now the laughing stock of Dublin. In addition, Molly resents her competitor, the singer Kathleen Kearney (who appears in the short story "A Mother" in Dubliners). Molly also takes pride in the fact that when she was a girl her hair was thicker than Hester's, her girl friend's, (and thus she reminds one of Hedda Gabler, who wanted to burn off her rival's hair in Ibsen's play). In addition, when Molly reminisces through the mists of years about her young lover, Mulvey, who she thinks is probably around 40 by now (1904), she imagines that he is married and takes pride in the fact that she had him first (masturbating him into a handkerchief).
Molly is refreshing, even when her scornful criticism is directed towards Joyce's other characters in the novel, for her observations shed new insights into their actions and motivations. For example, Molly assails the "boiled eyes" of Menton, the pompous lawyer. She wonders if Paul de Kock, the author of salacious novels, was so nicknamed because he was "going about with his tube from one woman to another . . . ," and she sees Simon Dedalus as both flirtatious and overly critical.
Likewise, Molly's skepticism is directed with special vigor towards the two men in her life, Boylan and Bloom. Boylan slapped Molly on the rump a bit too familiarly as he was leaving; afterward, she feels, and quite rightly, that she is not a horse or an ass. Neither did he show much manliness when, at her insistence, he withdrew from her in order to prevent pregnancy (the final time, though, he did complete the act). Nor is Boylan very sophisticated: He undressed in front of her so matter-of-factly that Molly was annoyed. Perhaps, she wonders, he was simply taking her for granted. Even while dreaming of becoming Mrs. Boylan, Molly knows that this union will never come about, and she wonders musingly how she can extort presents from her lover.
