With all of Molly's untutored insights into the human condition, her full acceptance of the fun of life, one question remains for the reader of Ulysses: what is to be the future relationship between Molly and Bloom? Although the question is ultimately unanswerable (for anyone), Joyce does provide several clues or workpoints that argue to a possible reconciliation. The breakfast in bed that Molly will probably cook for Bloom later in the morning of June 17 and her memory of the encounter on Howth Hill, when she led Bloom into proposing to her, are the bookends of this chapter. Both of them contain symbols of rebirth: if the breakfast is to be cooked, it will consist of eggs, usually a symbol of rebirth in Joyce; and Molly's thoughts of the younger, more handsome Bloom include the moment when she passed into his mouth "the bit of seedcake," another hint of rebirth.
The real "evidence" of a future for the Blooms, however, is to be found in how well she knows him. As was noted earlier, Molly is on to all of his tricks. She knows of his pornographic collecting, of his eating habits when he has a crush on a new woman, of his blotting out a letter (to Martha), of his particular susceptibility to maneuvering females (since he is almost 40), of his avoiding the house when he is guiltily in love, and of the fact that other people make fun of him behind his back. Yet she is still able to remember what he was like, and her ending memories present a much better and less farcical Bloom than we have seen throughout the rest of Ulysses.
And is it possible for a timid advertising salesman ever to break up with someone who knows his faults so well — and who accepts them in her own peculiar way?
