The extract Penelope belongs to the and last part of the J. Joyce's novel Ulysses. The part is called Nostos (return) and recalls to the reader's mind the Homer's Ulysses' return at home, where his wife, Penelope, was waiting for him.

The reader viewed Molly as the archetypical whore. However, recent focus on the realistic quality of the monologue shows that Molly's character comes across as believably contradictory and nuanced. Her thoughts reveal her to be extremely self-centered, yet she is also shown to be charitable and potentially sympathetic toward others, such as Josie Breen and Stephen. She comes across as uneducated but clever, opinionated, and refreshingly frank. She is hypocritical and self-contradictory but also highly perceptive she ratifies our negative judgments of some characters, such as Lenehan. Finally, Molly's monologue is highly entertaining-she has a sense of humor and a gift for mimicking the speech of others.

Molly's monologue contains facts and emotions that force us to revise our previous perspective of her and her marriage. For example, Bloom's mental list of Molly's infidelities in Episode Seventeen is here shown to be wildly incorrect Boylan is Molly's first sexual infidelity, and it has occurred only after more than ten sexless years (and perceived lack of affection) with Bloom. Molly's thoughts offer a new perspective: it is Bloom who has been compromising her, and his own infidelities call his easy judgment of Molly as unfaithful into question.

However, though Molly gets the final say, her perspective is also dramatized as fallible, specifically through her meditations on Stephen, which are misinformed and idealized. Molly fantasizes about Stephen's humility, friendliness, and cleanliness three characteristics that do not apply to Stephen as we have seen him. This technique does not demonstrate Molly's individual misperception, as much as the lesson of perspective in Ulysses: no single character's perspective will be sufficient to pass judgment. Though Molly's feelings toward Bloom oscillate wildly throughout her monologue, as the episode comes to a close, her thoughts center more on Bloom and Stephen-Rudy and less on Boylan and other suitors. The sexual desire prevalent through her monologue becomes more evidently underwritten with a compatible desire for the intimacy of the family structure. Molly's mental return to the scene on Howth that Bloom has also thought of several times today shows the power of memory to provide a source of continued intimacy between them, even if her final yes may be in reference to Mulvey or Bloom. This uncertainty is characteristic of Joyce's endings, and it serves to remind us that we have witnessed only a single day in the lives of the Blooms progress may have been made in their estranged marriage, but there certainly was not a complete turnaround. On the other hand, the unrestrained affirmation and joy of the final lines cannot be denied.