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observations of the world in which she dwells, exposing the
fallacy of religious oppression of sexuality, the brutality of
wars, the unreliability of male textuality, the hypocrisy of the
Dublin community, etc. As resistant and unconventional as her
male counterpart, Molly performs the intellectual function of
rejecting ready-made clichés and speaking the truth to power.
The representation of the outspoken anti-intellectual Molly
who has the last word of
Ulysses
, along with the description of
the loveable semi-intellectual Leopold, may suggest on one
hand Joyce’s poignant critique of the arrogant and snobbish
intellectuals such as Deasy and Menton, and the corrupt and
degenerate ones like Crawford, O’Molloy, MacHugh, and
others who fail to live up to their calling: it is not the social
elites, but rather the common people, or the masses, who may
act as the backbone and conscience of modern Irish society,
and it is the outsider detached from the center of power who is
more likely to challenge ready-made ideology and speak the
truth to power. Joyce’s depictions of Bloom and Molly, on the
other hand, may also imply his dialogue with the idealistic
intellectuals, his younger self included, who overlook the
realistic aspects and confront limits to their projects. The
frustrated Stephen needs to strike a balance between idealistic
and materialistic aspects, to learn from Bloom to embrace life
while rejecting easy formulas, to question authorities but
remain open-minded to possibilities, and to replace bitterness
and aloofness with caring and tolerance. The materialistic and
idealistic aspects, as a matter of fact, form part and parcel of
Joyce the mature intellectual. By contrasting Bloom and Molly
with the “talents” in
Ulysses
, in summary, Joyce rethinks the
role of the intellectual, counteracting the overly idealistic
Western philosophy with the representations of his new Irish
couple.