Molly Bloom's soliloquy is the final chapter of James Joyce's novel Ulysses (often referred to as Penelope, after Molly's mythical counterpart).

It is a compilation of the thoughts of Molly Bloom, the concert-singing wife of advertising agent Leopold Bloom, whose wanderings around Dublin are followed in much of the book. The very last words of the book are:

"...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. "

Molly's physicality is often contrasted with the intellectualism of the male characters, and of Stephen Dedalus in particular. It concludes Ulysses on a relatively passionate note.

Other interpretations focus less on Molly Bloom as a sensual, visceral "Earth Mother" figure, and instead interpret her frank depiction of sexuality as a defiant (if unwitting) rebuke to the religious and social taboos that would have otherwise served to instill in her a traditional Christian fear and shame of the body. Indeed, the detriment of such religio-social prohibitions on the psyche can be seen in the God-fearing atheist, Stephen, whose nuerosis have alienated him from his family, his country, and himself. Not only does Molly Bloom flaunt accepted mores, but in her fluid, probing, and guiltless interior monologue, she presents herself as one of the few Dubliners who doesn't find herself a victim of, or a collaborator with Ireland's two masters: the British Empire and the Roman Catholic Church. The Molly Bloom chapter presents a radically subaltern comprehension of the body and its relationship to the world, God, psyche, and self. Indeed, many French feminists have pin pointed the Molly Bloom chapter as the genesis of modern feminist consciousness, and the passage has served as a powerful, even radical symbol of resistance to forms of racial and gender colonizations of the body.

Molly Bloom's soliloquy was also used as the basis for a techno music song by Amber, entitled "Yes", and for Kate Bush's song "The Sensual World". It is quoted by the Firesign Theatre on their album How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All. The soliloquy is also featured in a Rodney Dangerfield movie, "Back to School", wherein it is read aloud to a college English class by Dr. Diane Turner (played by Sally Kellerman). Her passionate reading causes the over-excited Thornton Melon ( played by Mr. Dangerfield ) to blurt out "YES! YES!" during the class.

Narratology | Ulysses (novel)