Molly Bloom


Molly Bloom is a fictional character in the 1922 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 is having an affair with Hugh 'Blazes' Boylan. Molly, whose given name is Marion, was born in Gibraltar on 8 September 1870, the daughter of Major Tweedy, an Irish military officer, and Lunita Laredo, a Gibraltarian of Spanish descent. Molly and Leopold were married on 8 October 1888. She is the mother of Milly Bloom, who, at the age of 15, has left home to study 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 chapter of Ulysses, often called "Molly Bloom's Soliloquy", is a long and almost entirely unpunctuated passage comprising her thoughts as she lies in bed next to Leopold.

Soliloquy

Ms Molly Bloom's soliloquy is the eighteenth and final "episode" of Ulysses, in which the thoughts of Molly Bloom are presented in contrast to those of the previous narrators, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. Molly's physicality is often contrasted with the intellectualism of the male characters, Stephen Dedalus in particular.
Joyce's novel presented the action with numbered "episodes" rather than named chapters. Most critics since Stuart Gilbert, in his James Joyce's Ulysses, have named the episodes and they are often called chapters. The final chapter is referred to as "Penelope", after Molly's mythical counterpart.
In the course of the monologue, Molly accepts Leopold into her bed, frets about his health, and then reminisces about their first meeting and about when she knew she was in love with him. The final words of Molly's reverie, and the final words of the book, are:
Joyce noted in a 1921 letter to Frank Budgen that "The last word is left to Penelope." The episode both begins and ends with "yes", a word that Joyce described as "the female word" and that he said indicated "acquiescence, self-abandon, relaxation, the end of all resistance." This last, clear "yes" stands in sharp contrast to her unintelligible first spoken line in the fourth chapter of the novel.
Molly's soliloquy consists of eight enormous "sentences", The concluding period following the final words of her reverie is one of only two punctuation marks in the chapter, the periods at the end of the fourth and eighth "sentences". When written this episode contained the longest "sentence" in English literature, 4,391 words expressed by Molly Bloom.

Cultural references

Literature

  • J. M. Coetzee's novel Elizabeth Costello portrays the fictional writer Costello as the author of a fictional novel, The House on Eccles Street, which is written from Molly Bloom's point of view.
  • Susan Turlish's play Lafferty's Wake features the character Molly Greaney quoting from Molly's monologue.
  • Nobel laureate Mo Yan concludes The Republic of Wine with what could be seen as an homage to Molly's soliloquy.

    Music

  • Ron McFarland has written a 2-character comic "micro-opera", The Audition of Molly Bloom, which culminates with the soliloquy.
  • Kate Bush's song "The Sensual World" echoes Molly Bloom's soliloquy. Bush's 2011 album Director's Cut includes a newer version of the track with new vocals that use the original Joyce text.
  • Amber produced a dance song entitled "Yes!".
  • "Yes I Said Yes I Will Yes" is the title of a track by Bristol-based jazz quartet Get the Blessing, appearing on their album Bugs in Amber.
  • Tom Paxton's album 6 contains a song titled "Molly Bloom".
  • The video of "Endless Art" by A House spells out part of the soliloquy letter by letter.

    Film and television

  • The soliloquy is featured in a Rodney Dangerfield movie, Back to School, wherein it is read aloud to a college English class by Dr. Diane Turner.
  • Stephen Colbert's parody of Donald Trump's announcement for his presidential candidacy, entitled "Announcing: an Announcement", recites part of the soliloquy in an otherwise random series of statements.
  • The 2017 film Molly's Game contains a character who believes Molly Bloom, the film's poker hostess, is Irish. Molly says, "Okay, Douglas. Focus up. Yes, there's a book by James Joyce called Ulysses and there's a character named Molly Bloom and that is why you think I'm Irish but now it's time to move past that."

    Art

  • A bronze sculpture of Molly Bloom stands at the Alameda Gardens in Gibraltar. This running figure was commissioned from Jon Searle to celebrate the bicentenary of the Gibraltar Chronicle in 2001.

    Other

The character Ralph Spoilsport recites the end of the soliloquy, with erratic variations in gender pronouns, as the last lines of the Firesign Theatre's album How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All.