# Mrs Breen — Ulysses character guide

> Mrs Breen in Ulysses by James Joyce.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Mrs Breen, Josie Powell, Josie, Mrs Breen Glory Alice

**First appearance:** 0004-ii

## Snapshot

Molly Bloom's girlhood friend Josie Powell, now married to the erratic Denis Breen, greets Bloom on the street with a warmth that unsettles him.

## Who they are

Once Josie Powell, she courted the same young Bloom who eventually chose Molly, and the memory of that rivalry hums beneath their chance meetings. Now Mrs Breen, tethered to a husband whose eccentricities make her a figure of Dublin amusement, she still carries the spark of the girl who lost and kept something. Her brief, charged encounter with Bloom in the midday streets gives the novel one of its sharpest glimpses of the life he might have lived.

## In the story

### [Penelope](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/chapters/xviii)

Mentioned as Josie Powell; Molly recalls her and other acquaintances.

## Links

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