Mrs. May (Mary) Dedalus is Stephen Dedalus’ recently-deceased mother. A devout Catholic, much of the end of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the beginning of Ulysses focuses on the pain that Stephen’s abandonment of Catholicism caused Mrs. Dedalus.

Mrs. Dedalus appears only in memories throughout the book: mostly in Stephen’s but also in Leopold Bloom’s reminder to himself that Stephen has recently lost his mother and Simon Dedalus his wife.