Molly’s Masterstroke

Joyce is expert in portraying foreground action that hides what is unseen in the background of his fiction. This is true of Eveline in Dubliners, who accepts at face value Frank the sailor’s story of arriving in Dublin to find a bride who will return with him to Buenos Aires, and it is also true of Molly Bloom’s encounter with Blazes Boylan. When Bloom recalls hitting his head on the sideboard in “Ithaca” and notes that the furniture in his home has been moved, the reader wonders how this could have happened but is left with only speculations. Molly’s inexperience in adultery may well have led her to attempt to reduce Boylan’s sexual energy by having him undertake a rearrangement of the living room, and Bloom may realize this and take some comfort from her attempts to postpone intercourse, just as Penelope delayed her suitors’ importunities by a clever stratagem.