Dolores is a young Irish woman who moves into Mrs. Kehoe’s house after Miss Keegan leaves. Unlike the other boarders, Dolores pays part of her rent by cleaning the house. Miss McAdam and Diana dislike this, both worrying that this will tarnish the entire household’s reputation. Forging an unlikely alliance, Miss McAdam and Diana approach Eilis and implore her to join them in refusing to eat dinner with Dolores, but Eilis finds this idea elitist and cruel, so she refuses. Perhaps because of this, Mrs. Kehoe asks her to take Dolores to that week’s dance, and though she desperately wants to say no, she agrees. When she gets to the dance, though, she quickly abandons Dolores to dance with Tony for the first time, glad to have an excuse to stop spending time with Dolores.
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Dolores Character Timeline in Brooklyn
The timeline below shows where the character Dolores appears in Brooklyn. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part Three
...at dinner that there’s a new boarder living in her old room. Her name is Dolores, and Diana and Miss McAdam come to Eilis’s door that night to talk about her....
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...next day, Mrs. Kehoe catches Eilis on her way out and asks her to take Dolores to the dance that night. Not knowing what to say, Eilis agrees, regretting her decision...
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At the dance, Eilis barely responds to Dolores’s many questions and comments. While standing in the church, she feels awkward as Dolores talks...
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...she says yes, thinking that this will be a good way of freeing herself from Dolores, whom she refuses to look at. When they start dancing again, the songs are slow,...
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...wanting to know who he is and what he does. The fact that Eilis abandoned Dolores has endeared her to the other lodgers once again, and even Dolores doesn’t seem to...
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