# Polly Mooney — Dubliners character guide

> Polly Mooney in Dubliners by James Joyce.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0006-the-boarding-house

## Snapshot

The Mooneys' watchful daughter, whose quiet affair with a lodger becomes the bargaining chip in her mother's careful campaign.

## Who they are

Polly lives above the family boarding house, aware that she is being watched and that her mother's silence carries its own meaning. She is neither naive nor fully in control: she wants the affair to be thought her own wise innocence, yet she is also the object of a negotiation she cannot direct. Her awkwardness and her mother's patience together make her the still center of a story about respectability, leverage, and the small violences of family love.

## In the story

### [The Boarding House](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dubliners_se/chapters/the-boarding-house)

The daughter whose affair with Mr. Doran is used by her mother to secure a marriage.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dubliners_se/characters/polly_mooney
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dubliners_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dubliners_se/characters