Molly, Mr. Stanhope, and Hester: A Genetic Reading of a Love Triangle in Ulysses

Abstract

This essay explores the moments in the creative process when Joyce established certain narrative elements about Molly’s closest (and, as far as readers know, only) female friend in Gibraltar, Hester Stanhope, as well as the narrative consequences of emphasizing Mr. Stanhope’s attraction to the young Molly. From a genetic critical perspective, it studies the gradual, complex, and sometimes elusive ways in which Joyce wove the narratological patterns that serve to construct his characters. Such a mode of analysis reveals the strategies through which specialist textual work directly intersects with other critical readings. The ways in which Joyce developed the Stanhopes are paradigmatic of the construction and function of many of the book’s minor players. He did not create the secondary and tertiary characters for their own sakes but rather to illuminate various aspects of Leopold and Molly Bloom and their love story. In this case, the most basic role the Stanhopes play in Ulysses is as the background of Molly’s reflections about her sexuality as a young woman in Gibraltar in 1886 and in Dublin in 1904.