James Joyce Essay, Research Paper
Stephen Dedalus, the main character in most of James Joyce’s writings, is said to be a reflection of Joyce himself. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the reader follows Stephen as he develops from a young child into a young artist, overcoming many conflicts both internally and externally, and narrowly escaping a life long commitment to the clergy. Through Joyce’s use of free indirect style, all of Stephen’s speech, actions, and thoughts are filtered through the narrator of the story. However, since Joyce so strongly identifies with Stephen, his character’s style and personality greatly influence the narrator. This use of free indirect style and stylistic contagion makes Joyce’s use of descriptive language one of his most valuable tools in accurately depicting Stephen Dedalus’s developing ideals of feminine beauty.
As a very young child Stephen is taught to idealize the Virgin Mary for her purity and holiness. She is described to Stephen as “a tower of Ivory” and a “House of Gold” (p.35). Stephen takes this literally and becomes confused as to how these beautiful elements of ivory and gold could make up a human being. This confusion is important in that it shows Stephen’s inability to grasp abstraction. He is a young child who does not yet understand how someone can say one thing and mean something else. This also explains his trouble in the future with solving the riddles and puzzles presented to him by his classmates at Clongowes. Stephen is very thoughtful and observant and looks for his own way to explain or rationalize the things that he does not understand. In this manner he can find those traits that he associates with the Blessed Mary in his protestant playmate Eileen. Her hands are “long and white and thin and cold and soft. That was ivory: a cold white thing. That was the meaning of Tower of Ivory” (p.36). “Her fair hair had streamed out behind her like gold in the sun” (p.43). To Stephen that is the meaning of House of Gold. He then attributes Eileen’s ivory hands to the fact that she is a girl and generalized these traits to all females. This produces a major conflict for Stephen when his tutor, Dante, tells him not to play with Eileen because she is Protestant and Protestants don’t understand the Catholic faith and therefore will make a mockery of it. His ideas about women being unattainable are confirmed. The Virgin Mary is divine and therefore out of reach for mortals. Now Eileen, the human representation of the Blessed Mary, is out of reach as well because Stephen is not allowed to play with her.
In chapter two an amazing transformation takes place in Stephen from a young innocent child who believes women are unattainable and who idealizes the Virgin Mary, into a young teen with awakening sexual desires. As Stephen matures into adolescence, he becomes increasingly aware of his sexuality, which at times is confusing to him. At the beginning of the second chapter in A Portrait, we find Stephen associating feminine beauty with the heroine Mercedes in Alexander Dumont Pere’s The Count of Monte Cristo. “Outside Blackrock, on the road that led to the mountains, stood a small whitewashed house in the garden of which grew many rosebushes: and in this house, he told himself, another Mercedes lived?.there appeared an image of himself, grown older and sadder, standing in a moonlit garden with Mercedes who had so many years before slighted his love?”(p. 62-3). These fantasies about Mercedes are the first real step for Stephen in challenging the church’s view of women, but again he feels as though this image of women is out of his reach. She is a fictional character in a Romantic Adventure novel and he can only imagine himself with her. Although Mercedes may not be real, the feelings that Stephen has and the emotions she provokes in him are very real. “?As he brooded upon her image, a strange unrest crept into his blood.” (p.64). “?but a premonition which led him on told him that this image would, without any overt act of his, encounter him? and in that moment of supreme tenderness he would be transfigured. He would fade into something impalpable under her eyes and then in a moment, he would be transfigured. Weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from him that magic moment.” (p.65). Stephen realizes that some transformation is going to take place, and Joyce emphasizes the words “transfigured” and “moment” to indicate the kind of impact it will have on Stephen. At this point in the novel, Stephen attributes this “premonition” to his attraction to young Emma Clery. “?Amid the music and laughter her glance traveled to his corner, flattering, taunting, searching, exciting his heart.” “?Sprays of her fresh warm breath flew gaily above her cowled head and her shoes tapped blithely on the glassy road.” (p. 69). As they wait for the last tram from a Christmas party “His
heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide.” Joyce carefully
uses these words to ease the reader into the transition to sensual imagery to
portray females. These words convey Stephen’s feelings of excitement, and a
new conflict arises within him. He who still believes in the Catholic view of
divine women now feels troubled over his growing sexual drives. Stephen
realizes that she is flirting with him by the way she “urges her vanities” yet he
is tempted to call her on it. He wants to hold on to her and kiss her and he
associates the whole situation with the way in which Eileen had suddenly run
down the path in a peal of laughter hoping he would chase her. The conflict
within Stephen whether or not to kiss Emma stems from his continuing
religious beliefs that women are holy and not to be defiled, and like with
Mercedes, he is forced to be content in fulfilling his wishes only in his head.
This encounter with Emma does place females at a slightly more attainable
level for Stephen and we are able to see how it begins to shape his ultimate
ideals of feminine beauty. However connected to the church Stephen feels, it
is impossible for him to just push these feelings away from himself and ignore
them. He decides to write a poem about Emma Clery and for the first time,
we see Stephen successfully use art as a means of expression and relief. In
his poem which is modeled after one from his favorite poet, Byron, he acts
out what he wishes he would have done and that is to give Emma a kiss.
Again this illustrates a side of Stephen that is not comfortable with
abstraction. He has not yet come to the realization that he is not unlike other
boys his age. This poem which is addressed to E____C____, starts out with
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriem, a Latin phrase meaning, “For the Greater Glory of
God” and ends with Laus Deo Semper meaning, “Praise to God Always”.
This is especially interesting because the poem merges both religion and art
without Stephen’s knowledge that this is where the heart of the conflict lies. It
becomes an even greater conflict for Stephen when, as time passes, he finds
it more and more difficult to resist the temptations of his sexual urges. He
mentally defiles “with patience whatever image had attracted his eyes” (p.99)
and turns those images which had been innocent by day into cunning and
sinful images at night. His urges grow and become so strong that Stephen is
no longer able to resist temptation and crosses that line into wretched sinner.
The next major step in Stephen’s transformation is his visit to the prostitute.
The setting for this visit carries all of the elements of a Black Mass. “Women
and girls dressed in long vivid gowns traversed the street?The yellow
gasflames arose before his troubled vision against the vapoury sky, burning as
if before an altar.” (p.100). The long vivid gowns of the women and girls
could be like those of the priests and the yellow gasflames are meant to
conjure up images of decay upon the altar. As the prostitute approaches
Stephen, Joyce uses the word “detain” to show how the prostitute may have
held Stephen against his will. This word becomes significant later on in
Stephen’s discussion with the priest in chapter five as the priest tells Stephen
the difference between the traditional use of the word detain and it’s use in
the marketplace. Virgin Mary was “detained in the full company of the saints”
(p.188) is different from “I hope I am not detaining you” (p.188). In this way,
Joyce implies that Stephen was seduced by the prostitute and attempted to
resist her up until the very last moment before she kissed him. Stephen does
not make a move towards the prostitute, but instead waits in the middle of the
room until she comes to him. He will not bend to kiss her. He feels reassured
by her embrace and longed for her to just hold and caress him. Perhaps he
regarded her as a mother figure and he gained strength from this encounter.
Joyce’s description of the room, the obscene doll with it’s legs spread, the
way the prostitute lures him in and bends his lips to hers for him gives the
reader the impression that Stephen is an innocent and the prostitute is the
sinner. This scene puts a new perspective on that holy image of women for
Stephen. It is a sharp contrast to those ideas of holiness and purity and
innocent shyness that he associated with Emma, and of course, the Blessed
Mary. It is even a contradiction to the image he had of Mercedes. Although
this encounter awakens a sense of freedom in Stephen that he will not be able
to suppress later on in the novel, he still cannot help but feel overwhelming
guilt about what he has done. At the retreat, he listens to Father Arnell’s
sermon about hell that seems to be targeted directly at him, turning his
tremendous guilt into fear. He has failed to avoid sin and for that he will suffer
the most horrible fate that anyone could ever imagine?spending eternity in
hell. He feels so ashamed that he is unable to repent in his own church at
Clongowes, but rather wishes to find a place as far removed from the college
as possible. This shame and guilt makes him vulnerable when the director at
Clongowes confronts him about becoming a priest. He envisions the power
he would have and thinks that if he were a priest that his superior piety would
save him from the wrath of hell. For him it seemed the only plausible escape.
His experience with the prostitute is essential in Stephen’s reanalysis of his
attraction to Emma Clery. He realizes now that her flirtatious gestures were
not reserved for him alone, and he suspected that she flaunted her charm to
many men. He becomes angry at the idea that women did not remain pure for
their own sake, but only out of their religious fear that their souls would be
damned if they sinned against the church. This point seems to be the height of
Stephen’s confusion until his encounter with the Bird Girl, the final step in his
complete transfiguration into the artist. While waiting for his father outside the
publichouse, Stephen wandered on to Bull to reflect and to escape the
anxiety he felt waiting to hear word about the university. He heard a few of
his classmates calling out to him and the sounds of his own name made him
think of the mythical Dedalus. Like the myth, Stephen wanted to fly up like a
bird. This may be a foreshadowing of Stephen’s leaving Ireland and flying
past the “nets” which would hold him back. He feels as though he is being
reborn into adulthood and has finally reached that point in his life where he is
capable of fulfilling his calling in life. This calling that he feels is unlike anything
that has ever spoken to him before and it invokes in him an incredible
freedom of spirit. As his mind, body and soul are still soaring from this
“ecstasy of flight”, he repeatedly mentions that he is alone. He is happy and
free, but he is alone. Then he sees her. “A girl stood before him in midstream,
alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one whom magic had
changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird.” (p.171). The
imagery in the following passage and the particular words Joyce uses to
present that imagery are very meaningful. The girl is the perfect balance
between Stephen’s two extreme ideas of women. “Her thighs, fuller and
softhued as ivory, were bared almost to the hip?”(p.171). She is “delicate”
and “pure” and she has all the qualities of innocent virginity, but at the same
time, she exposes her flesh in a sensual manner and exhibits a “mortal
beauty”. Stephen’s comparison of her to a crane and a dove shows an
important relationship between the girl and Stephen’s freedom. She was
neither virgin nor whore. She was attainable. “To live, to err, to fall, to
triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him?”
(p.172). She certainly seemed divine to Stephen who associated her
presence to the calling of a life of art. He knows immediately that if he had
been destined to a life in the church that this would have been the kind of
calling he should have experienced. Instead he realizes that he cannot become
a priest because he is unable to adhere to those physiological restrictions
demanding of the profession. He has also discovered that to err is human and
to have desires of the flesh is natural. He is no longer disgusted by human
desires and realizes how beautiful love, passion, and devotion can be from an
artist’s perspective. Stephan Dedalus’s transformation into a “priest of the
arts” is parallel to the early life of James Joyce. Both struggle to deal with the
conflicts of childhood and adolescence to find a balance in which they can
happily live. Since A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is written in third
person, yet employs the characteristics of the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus,
the use of descriptive language is essential to the reader’s understanding of
the novel as a whole. James Joyce excellently uses his talent to successfully
communicate Stephen’s feelings so that we, the reader, can understand the
development of his attitudes and ideals about feminine beauty.