Molly Bloom

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Molly Bloom is a fictional character in the novel Ulysses by James Joyce. The wife of main character Leopold Bloom, she roughly corresponds to Penelope in the Odyssey. The major difference between Molly and Penelope is that while Penelope is eternally faithful, Molly is not. Molly has an affair with Blazes Boylan after ten years of her celibacy within her marriage. Joyce modeled the character upon his wife Nora Barnacle; indeed, the day upon which the novel is set -- June 16 1904, now called Bloomsday -- is that of their first date.

Molly, whose given name is Marion, was born on Gibraltar in 1870, the daughter of Major Tweedy and Lunita Laredo. Molly and Leopold were married in 1888. She is the mother of Milly Bloom, who, at the age of 15, has gone away to learn the art of photography. She is also the mother of Rudy Bloom, who died at the age of 11 days. In Dublin Molly is an opera singer of some renown.

The final, unpunctuated chapter of Ulysses, often called "Molly Bloom's Soliloquy," is a long stream of consciousness passage comprising her thoughts as she lies in bed next to Bloom.

She is the subject of The House on Eccles Street, a fictional novel, written from Molly's point of view, written by Elizabeth Costello, the eponymous heroine of J M Coetzee's novel.

References

Blamires, Harry (1988). The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses (Revised Edition Keyed to the Corrected Text). London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-00704-6.

Joyce, James (1992). Ulysses: The 1934 Text, as Corrected and Reset in 1961. New York: The Modern Library. ISBN 0-679-60011-6.

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