Molly Bloom's Soliloquy characters

Also known as Marion Bloom

Appears from the start

A professional singer lying awake beside her husband in their Dublin home. Her unpunctuated flow of memory moves among marriage, desire, motherhood, bodily experience, money, performance, resentment, and affection, presenting her as candid, contradictory, and strongly responsive to sensory life.

Also known as Poldy

Appears from the start

Molly's husband, who returns home late and sleeps beside her while she thinks. Her reflections range over his habits, work, peculiar requests, suspected infidelities, kindnesses, and the complicated mixture of irritation and attachment within their marriage.

Also known as Blazes Boylan

Appears from the start

Molly's concert manager and her lover on the day of the monologue. Her thoughts revisit his visit, his self-confidence, and the physical affair while also comparing him critically with her husband.

Appears from the start

Molly and Leopold's teenage daughter, now living away from home while studying photography. Molly thinks about her development, clothing, prospects, and the changing relationship between mother and daughter.

Appears from the start

Molly and Leopold's son, who died in infancy. His absence remains an important private fact within the Blooms' marriage and helps explain the emotional and physical distance that has grown between his parents.

Appears from the start

A young writer whom Leopold has brought home late at night. Molly has not met him during the episode, but her curiosity about his intelligence, voice, manners, and possible future visits turns him into an imagined alternative within her closing thoughts.