The Struggle Within: Portrait of the Artist
“The different sides of Stephen in Portrait express different intentions of Joyce’s. The intentions make up the rhythm of Stephen’s mental life,” (Brivic, 280). The entire novel is summed up here; Joyce is constantly throwing clashing and opposite symbols at Stephen’s character to show how they differ and are alike to Stephen. James Joyce uses Apollo, the bisexual Greek God of art, and examples of Stephen’s personality butting against the stronger, more primarily male personalities of the other characters, such as Stephen’s father, to show Stephen’s confusion and journey through out Portrait. Accordingly, as a result of the symbols around him and how they affect Stephen, he spends almost the entire duration of the novel switching between the feminine and masculine sides of his persona, which leads to the theme of Stephen’s struggle with sexuality within the book.
At a very young age Stephen’s idea of women was influenced, in a very complicated way, by those around him, mainly his mother and father and also is zealot, extremely devoted Catholic teacher, Dante. Stephen had a Protestant play mate, Eileen, with whom he engaged in a very innocent, naïve, loving relationship that is normal for to kids so young in age in to be, and healthy. But the relationship was looked down upon by Stephen’s teacher, Dante, because Eileen was a Protestant and Stephen’s family were Catholic. Also Dante placed the burden of the two contrasting symbols of women on Stephen’s shoulders; the Tower of Ivory, and the House of Gold. “Tower of Ivory, they used to say, House of Gold! How could a woman be a tower of ivory or a house of gold? Who was right then?... Eileen had long white hands. One evening when playing tig she had put her hands over his eyes: long and white and thin and cold and soft. That was the meaning of Tower of Ivory,” (45). The two extremes of women enforced on Stephen here leave a lasting impression on the boy’s mind, pure; impure, Tower of Ivory; House of Gold, mother or virgin; strumpet. This impression leaves Stephen confused on how to see women and how to deal with the sexual thoughts of them he will experience later. Through out the entire novel Stephen views women very one dimensionally and I believe it stems from this example. Like with anything else, the most important relationships people have are those made from an early age, at the beginning stages of our mental development, they are the ones that teach how other relationships should go, people learn social habits from them. Stephen was too young to understand the difference between Catholic and a Protestant, he liked Eileen for her, they were just school yard friends, playmates. Stephen even thought he was going to marry Eileen in boyish innocence and hopefulness. But under the alarm and stress placed down on him by Dante, Stephen comes to believe it was bad or wrong of him to think of her that way, or to think of girls that way. She and his mother even implanted the idea in young Stephen’s head that he should apologize for thinking such a way and threatened him the thought of an eagle coming and tearing out his eyes. This was Stephen’s first experience of the fear of being unmasculine and symbolically castrated. It left a traumatizing imprint on Stephen and, therefore, in the way he looks at women from this point on.
Later on when Stephen does start to get sexual thoughts of women he doesn’t know what to do with them, he feels guilty and dirty. Stephen has the inability to see a middle ground with women, they are either to be respected and remain forever pure, or others able to engage with sexually but never respect. This first leads to an confusion on how to view his mother, because while he wants to love and respect her, however she has clearly had sex, which sickens Stephen to think about. But what Stephen doesn’t realize is that sexual thoughts and things of that sort are a natural and normal aspects of life. But because Stephen was made to feel guilty about such things at a young age by his religion and the people closest to him, he sees them as immoral and inappropriate. Because he feels guilty thinking of women sexually, a masculine act, he switches to the feminine side of his being and starts thinking of men. “And though he trembled with cold and fright to think of the cruel long nails and of the high whistling sound of the cane and of the chill you felt at the end of your shirt when you undress yourself yet he felt a feeling of queer quiet pleasure inside him to think of the white fattish hands, clean and strong and gentle,” (53). A few pages ago he was thinking of Eileen’s and her hands, now he’s thinking of a man’s hands, which shows his switch from masculine to the feminine. Also this scene occurs shortly after Stephen gets bullied and literally demasculinized by the bully Wells, which leads to Stephen’s awkward sexual thoughts of men. The bully Wells asks if Stephen kisses his mother every night, and though Stephen gives two various answers, the boys still mock him and Stephen is left to wonder which is the right answer. But what Stephen doesn’t realize is the boys are teasing him for his innocence not his answer to the question. But the mockery becomes a symbolic castration for Stephen. The commonly accepted symbol for masculinity in this novel is eyes. In this scene Stephen looks to the ground, unable to meet the other boys’ gazes. He does this because they have taken his masculinity through humiliation and teasing. This scene causes Stephen to first think of his mother, whom would give him that maternal and infantile safety. Then he switches completely from his masculine side to his feminine and this starts the chain of Stephen’s awkward sexual thoughts of men. Another result of the pressure and fear enforced on Stephen through his family and religion because of his sexuality is his heinous sin with the strumpet. Stephen is a normal growing boy who is going through puberty and dealing with the craziness of changing hormones. But he wasn’t taught to deal with this area so calmly and normally, therefore he doesn’t know what to do with it. This pressure and insecurity leads him to the only thing that to Stephen thinks would be sure to understand sexuality; the strumpet. But once he and the strumpet are done “committing the sin” Stephen returns to the same fear, only now it’s worse because he committed a sin. The fear first places him in the infantile state of wanting his mother, and then again Stephen switches to the feminine side of his persona.
The other main male character is Mr Dedalus, Stephen’s father. This other character offers a basis for comparison between Stephen’s more feminine character to the more masculine of his father.
“Another, a brisk old man, whom Mr Dedalus called Johnny Cashman, had covered him with confusion by asking him to say which were prettier, the Dublin girls or the Cork girls.
-He’s not that way built, said Mr Dedalus. Leave him alone. He’s a levelheaded thinking boy who doesn’t bother his head about that kind of nonsense.
-Then he’s not his father’s son, said the little old man.
-I don’t know, I’m sure, said Mr Dedalus, smiling complacently.
-Your father, said the little old man to Stephen, was the boldest flirt in the city of Cork in his day. Do you know that?
Stephen looked down and studied the tiled floor of the bar into which they had drifted,” (93).
This is an unintended example of Stephen’s father feminizing him. Here is a story of Stephen’s father being a “ladies’ man,” so to say and being good at flirting with girls, the area that poor Stephen is having the most trouble and confusion over. He’s being shown up by his father. First of all Stephen does not want to hear at all of his father chasing after girls in his youth, but that reminds him of the fact that his mother is in fact impure, which Stephen does not like to think about. Moreover, he especially does not want to have think about his father be better at chasing girls than he is in his youth. He is unable to understand how his father can have such great success in an area where he so greatly suffers and the fact that his father’s friends are saying that Stephen is “not his father’s son” because he isn’t good with girls or constantly chasing girls just adds to the humiliation and shame of the situation. Then in the novel there are the times when Stephen’s father would intentionally feminize Stephen;
“-Yes father?
-Is your lazy bitch of a brother gone out yet?
-Yes, father.
-Sure?
-Yes, father.
-Hm!
The girl came back making signs to him to be quick and go out quietly by the back Stephen laughed and said:
-He has a curious idea of genders if he thinks a bitch is masculine,” (158).
Here his father is literally picking on him for being feminine. Stephen makes a joke about his father being unclear on genders because a bitch is feminine, but that is clearly exactly why his father is calling him that. He is insulting his son for being feminine, for being a “bitch”. Also the fact that Stephen downcasts his eyes when they’re talking in the bar is an instant symbolic castration and a switch for Stephen from masculine and feminine. Eyes, as said before, is the symbol for masculinity in this novel, by Stephen turning his eyes to the ground at the men’s retelling of his father’s ability to woo the women, Stephen is allowing himself to be castrated, allowing them to take his masculinity. Thus complete another switch from the masculine to the feminine for Stephen.
By definition in Brivic’s psychoanalytical essay on Portrait of the Artist, Stephen is compulsive; “they focus on language as a controllable substitute for reality; and they regress from the genital to the anal stage, which is bisexual or ambivalent (Freud: 20 113-23),” (Brivic, 284). Stephen is the type of character who turns to his art to deal with his short comings in life; “Freud describes parallels between the rituals practiced by compulsives and those of religion (9: 115-28); and during his religious phase, Stephen focuses on ascetic rituals that help to control his feelings,” (Brivic, 288). So not only does Stephen write to deal with his inability to relate to women, it’s also to hide from the topic of sexuality in general, as a whole. He lives in his head and has his most meaningful and successful relationships through his writing and reading. Stephen does not know the proper way to view women, the proper way to act or speak around women. Therefore, he creates these fictional relationships with women through his writing and in reading The Count of Monte Cristo. Because in reality Stephen’s one biggest problem with women is he can’t fully control the situation, it is interaction with another person and Stephen cannot have complete control, which scares him. But in these fictional relationships he can control every aspect, which is why he hides within them. But even these habits hint to his sexual struggle for all the obvious reasons but also through the symbol of Apollo. Apollo is the Greek god of art, that’s the obvious connection because Stephen is indeed the artist mentioned in this novel’s title, and Apollo’s relation to this is hinted within the scenes where Stephen is writing. But also Apollo is bisexual, which is the parallel to Stephen’s confusion on his sexuality. For instance, the situation of the homosexual incident at Clongowes, the character’s name brought in this part of the novel is Simon Moonan. Within the character’s last name is the word ‘Moon’. Apollo’s twin sister is Artemis, Greek goddess of the Moon. Now the way Stephen relates to this is his confusion at the situation, he can’t understand why the other boys would run because of what they did, he doesn’t know why they would be humiliated, and he deals with the whole ordeal with far less anxiety and repulsion as the other boys experience. I believe that Joyce included this situation, the character’s name, and Stephen’s neutral reaction as a way to hint to Stephen’s soon to be intense struggle with sexuality and ergo bisexuality, maybe even homosexuality. Then are the scenes where Stephen is actually writing; “there remained no trace of the tram itself nor of the trammen nor of the horses: nor did he or she appear vividly. The verses told only on the night and the balmy breeze and the maiden lustre of the moon,” (74). The fact that Joyce uses the word moon in Stephen’s writing also relates to Apollo, as mentioned earlier, Apollo’s twin sister is Atremis who is the Greek goddess of the moon. “The compulsive seesaw brings out sexual ambivalence, and indeed Stephen enacts Freud’s idea that all people contain both genders,” (Brivic, 284). Stephen does in fact embody both genders there are times when Stephen acts purely and appropriately masculine but then are times when he acts completely feminine and allows the other male characters to “castrate” him. Being stuck between acts of both genders and confusion of how to deal with that will obviously cause problems for Stephen in the ever prominent challenge of dealing with his sexuality.
“The conflicts and transformations in the structure enact opposing views by which Joyce both supports and condemns Stephen,” (Brivic, 279). Joyce uses these symbols to show the contrasts, like Stephen’s personality in comparison to the personality of his father, or even his school bully Wells, and parallels, for instance when Apollo is constantly being hinted in his writing and relationships. He uses symbols to take the reader along with Stephen in his journey. As Stephen is trying desperately to understand and identify with his sexuality and how to go about dealing with it, the reader goes along with him, constantly trying to unravel the mystery through the entire reading of the novel. While the reader, and Stephen, both leave the novel without really understanding Stephen completely as a sexual being, these symbols Joyce creates give a great deal of help to draw a conclusion. Also the symbols shed light on the reasons behind Stephen’s habit of escaping life through writing. Stephen is a writer, he is an artist, it is mentioned in the title, but with all art comes the question; why do it? What does it mean to the artist? For Stephen it is a way to deal and accomplish something he cannot do in reality, it is a way for Stephen to live out one area of his life on paper. Also it a way for Stephen to hide from possibly the only area of himself he cannot understand, both are beneficial and therapeutic for Stephen, just like most art is therapeutic for their artists. The portrait the symbols that Joyce uses through out his novel help to paint of Stephen in Portrait of the Artist is that of a confused boy indulging in life as fully as possible, with the help of his art.
“The different sides of Stephen in Portrait express different intentions of Joyce’s. The intentions make up the rhythm of Stephen’s mental life,” (Brivic, 280). The entire novel is summed up here; Joyce is constantly throwing clashing and opposite symbols at Stephen’s character to show how they differ and are alike to Stephen. James Joyce uses Apollo, the bisexual Greek God of art, and examples of Stephen’s personality butting against the stronger, more primarily male personalities of the other characters, such as Stephen’s father, to show Stephen’s confusion and journey through out Portrait. Accordingly, as a result of the symbols around him and how they affect Stephen, he spends almost the entire duration of the novel switching between the feminine and masculine sides of his persona, which leads to the theme of Stephen’s struggle with sexuality within the book.
At a very young age Stephen’s idea of women was influenced, in a very complicated way, by those around him, mainly his mother and father and also is zealot, extremely devoted Catholic teacher, Dante. Stephen had a Protestant play mate, Eileen, with whom he engaged in a very innocent, naïve, loving relationship that is normal for to kids so young in age in to be, and healthy. But the relationship was looked down upon by Stephen’s teacher, Dante, because Eileen was a Protestant and Stephen’s family were Catholic. Also Dante placed the burden of the two contrasting symbols of women on Stephen’s shoulders; the Tower of Ivory, and the House of Gold. “Tower of Ivory, they used to say, House of Gold! How could a woman be a tower of ivory or a house of gold? Who was right then?... Eileen had long white hands. One evening when playing tig she had put her hands over his eyes: long and white and thin and cold and soft. That was the meaning of Tower of Ivory,” (45). The two extremes of women enforced on Stephen here leave a lasting impression on the boy’s mind, pure; impure, Tower of Ivory; House of Gold, mother or virgin; strumpet. This impression leaves Stephen confused on how to see women and how to deal with the sexual thoughts of them he will experience later. Through out the entire novel Stephen views women very one dimensionally and I believe it stems from this example. Like with anything else, the most important relationships people have are those made from an early age, at the beginning stages of our mental development, they are the ones that teach how other relationships should go, people learn social habits from them. Stephen was too young to understand the difference between Catholic and a Protestant, he liked Eileen for her, they were just school yard friends, playmates. Stephen even thought he was going to marry Eileen in boyish innocence and hopefulness. But under the alarm and stress placed down on him by Dante, Stephen comes to believe it was bad or wrong of him to think of her that way, or to think of girls that way. She and his mother even implanted the idea in young Stephen’s head that he should apologize for thinking such a way and threatened him the thought of an eagle coming and tearing out his eyes. This was Stephen’s first experience of the fear of being unmasculine and symbolically castrated. It left a traumatizing imprint on Stephen and, therefore, in the way he looks at women from this point on.
Later on when Stephen does start to get sexual thoughts of women he doesn’t know what to do with them, he feels guilty and dirty. Stephen has the inability to see a middle ground with women, they are either to be respected and remain forever pure, or others able to engage with sexually but never respect. This first leads to an confusion on how to view his mother, because while he wants to love and respect her, however she has clearly had sex, which sickens Stephen to think about. But what Stephen doesn’t realize is that sexual thoughts and things of that sort are a natural and normal aspects of life. But because Stephen was made to feel guilty about such things at a young age by his religion and the people closest to him, he sees them as immoral and inappropriate. Because he feels guilty thinking of women sexually, a masculine act, he switches to the feminine side of his being and starts thinking of men. “And though he trembled with cold and fright to think of the cruel long nails and of the high whistling sound of the cane and of the chill you felt at the end of your shirt when you undress yourself yet he felt a feeling of queer quiet pleasure inside him to think of the white fattish hands, clean and strong and gentle,” (53). A few pages ago he was thinking of Eileen’s and her hands, now he’s thinking of a man’s hands, which shows his switch from masculine to the feminine. Also this scene occurs shortly after Stephen gets bullied and literally demasculinized by the bully Wells, which leads to Stephen’s awkward sexual thoughts of men. The bully Wells asks if Stephen kisses his mother every night, and though Stephen gives two various answers, the boys still mock him and Stephen is left to wonder which is the right answer. But what Stephen doesn’t realize is the boys are teasing him for his innocence not his answer to the question. But the mockery becomes a symbolic castration for Stephen. The commonly accepted symbol for masculinity in this novel is eyes. In this scene Stephen looks to the ground, unable to meet the other boys’ gazes. He does this because they have taken his masculinity through humiliation and teasing. This scene causes Stephen to first think of his mother, whom would give him that maternal and infantile safety. Then he switches completely from his masculine side to his feminine and this starts the chain of Stephen’s awkward sexual thoughts of men. Another result of the pressure and fear enforced on Stephen through his family and religion because of his sexuality is his heinous sin with the strumpet. Stephen is a normal growing boy who is going through puberty and dealing with the craziness of changing hormones. But he wasn’t taught to deal with this area so calmly and normally, therefore he doesn’t know what to do with it. This pressure and insecurity leads him to the only thing that to Stephen thinks would be sure to understand sexuality; the strumpet. But once he and the strumpet are done “committing the sin” Stephen returns to the same fear, only now it’s worse because he committed a sin. The fear first places him in the infantile state of wanting his mother, and then again Stephen switches to the feminine side of his persona.
The other main male character is Mr Dedalus, Stephen’s father. This other character offers a basis for comparison between Stephen’s more feminine character to the more masculine of his father.
“Another, a brisk old man, whom Mr Dedalus called Johnny Cashman, had covered him with confusion by asking him to say which were prettier, the Dublin girls or the Cork girls.
-He’s not that way built, said Mr Dedalus. Leave him alone. He’s a levelheaded thinking boy who doesn’t bother his head about that kind of nonsense.
-Then he’s not his father’s son, said the little old man.
-I don’t know, I’m sure, said Mr Dedalus, smiling complacently.
-Your father, said the little old man to Stephen, was the boldest flirt in the city of Cork in his day. Do you know that?
Stephen looked down and studied the tiled floor of the bar into which they had drifted,” (93).
This is an unintended example of Stephen’s father feminizing him. Here is a story of Stephen’s father being a “ladies’ man,” so to say and being good at flirting with girls, the area that poor Stephen is having the most trouble and confusion over. He’s being shown up by his father. First of all Stephen does not want to hear at all of his father chasing after girls in his youth, but that reminds him of the fact that his mother is in fact impure, which Stephen does not like to think about. Moreover, he especially does not want to have think about his father be better at chasing girls than he is in his youth. He is unable to understand how his father can have such great success in an area where he so greatly suffers and the fact that his father’s friends are saying that Stephen is “not his father’s son” because he isn’t good with girls or constantly chasing girls just adds to the humiliation and shame of the situation. Then in the novel there are the times when Stephen’s father would intentionally feminize Stephen;
“-Yes father?
-Is your lazy bitch of a brother gone out yet?
-Yes, father.
-Sure?
-Yes, father.
-Hm!
The girl came back making signs to him to be quick and go out quietly by the back Stephen laughed and said:
-He has a curious idea of genders if he thinks a bitch is masculine,” (158).
Here his father is literally picking on him for being feminine. Stephen makes a joke about his father being unclear on genders because a bitch is feminine, but that is clearly exactly why his father is calling him that. He is insulting his son for being feminine, for being a “bitch”. Also the fact that Stephen downcasts his eyes when they’re talking in the bar is an instant symbolic castration and a switch for Stephen from masculine and feminine. Eyes, as said before, is the symbol for masculinity in this novel, by Stephen turning his eyes to the ground at the men’s retelling of his father’s ability to woo the women, Stephen is allowing himself to be castrated, allowing them to take his masculinity. Thus complete another switch from the masculine to the feminine for Stephen.
By definition in Brivic’s psychoanalytical essay on Portrait of the Artist, Stephen is compulsive; “they focus on language as a controllable substitute for reality; and they regress from the genital to the anal stage, which is bisexual or ambivalent (Freud: 20 113-23),” (Brivic, 284). Stephen is the type of character who turns to his art to deal with his short comings in life; “Freud describes parallels between the rituals practiced by compulsives and those of religion (9: 115-28); and during his religious phase, Stephen focuses on ascetic rituals that help to control his feelings,” (Brivic, 288). So not only does Stephen write to deal with his inability to relate to women, it’s also to hide from the topic of sexuality in general, as a whole. He lives in his head and has his most meaningful and successful relationships through his writing and reading. Stephen does not know the proper way to view women, the proper way to act or speak around women. Therefore, he creates these fictional relationships with women through his writing and in reading The Count of Monte Cristo. Because in reality Stephen’s one biggest problem with women is he can’t fully control the situation, it is interaction with another person and Stephen cannot have complete control, which scares him. But in these fictional relationships he can control every aspect, which is why he hides within them. But even these habits hint to his sexual struggle for all the obvious reasons but also through the symbol of Apollo. Apollo is the Greek god of art, that’s the obvious connection because Stephen is indeed the artist mentioned in this novel’s title, and Apollo’s relation to this is hinted within the scenes where Stephen is writing. But also Apollo is bisexual, which is the parallel to Stephen’s confusion on his sexuality. For instance, the situation of the homosexual incident at Clongowes, the character’s name brought in this part of the novel is Simon Moonan. Within the character’s last name is the word ‘Moon’. Apollo’s twin sister is Artemis, Greek goddess of the Moon. Now the way Stephen relates to this is his confusion at the situation, he can’t understand why the other boys would run because of what they did, he doesn’t know why they would be humiliated, and he deals with the whole ordeal with far less anxiety and repulsion as the other boys experience. I believe that Joyce included this situation, the character’s name, and Stephen’s neutral reaction as a way to hint to Stephen’s soon to be intense struggle with sexuality and ergo bisexuality, maybe even homosexuality. Then are the scenes where Stephen is actually writing; “there remained no trace of the tram itself nor of the trammen nor of the horses: nor did he or she appear vividly. The verses told only on the night and the balmy breeze and the maiden lustre of the moon,” (74). The fact that Joyce uses the word moon in Stephen’s writing also relates to Apollo, as mentioned earlier, Apollo’s twin sister is Atremis who is the Greek goddess of the moon. “The compulsive seesaw brings out sexual ambivalence, and indeed Stephen enacts Freud’s idea that all people contain both genders,” (Brivic, 284). Stephen does in fact embody both genders there are times when Stephen acts purely and appropriately masculine but then are times when he acts completely feminine and allows the other male characters to “castrate” him. Being stuck between acts of both genders and confusion of how to deal with that will obviously cause problems for Stephen in the ever prominent challenge of dealing with his sexuality.
“The conflicts and transformations in the structure enact opposing views by which Joyce both supports and condemns Stephen,” (Brivic, 279). Joyce uses these symbols to show the contrasts, like Stephen’s personality in comparison to the personality of his father, or even his school bully Wells, and parallels, for instance when Apollo is constantly being hinted in his writing and relationships. He uses symbols to take the reader along with Stephen in his journey. As Stephen is trying desperately to understand and identify with his sexuality and how to go about dealing with it, the reader goes along with him, constantly trying to unravel the mystery through the entire reading of the novel. While the reader, and Stephen, both leave the novel without really understanding Stephen completely as a sexual being, these symbols Joyce creates give a great deal of help to draw a conclusion. Also the symbols shed light on the reasons behind Stephen’s habit of escaping life through writing. Stephen is a writer, he is an artist, it is mentioned in the title, but with all art comes the question; why do it? What does it mean to the artist? For Stephen it is a way to deal and accomplish something he cannot do in reality, it is a way for Stephen to live out one area of his life on paper. Also it a way for Stephen to hide from possibly the only area of himself he cannot understand, both are beneficial and therapeutic for Stephen, just like most art is therapeutic for their artists. The portrait the symbols that Joyce uses through out his novel help to paint of Stephen in Portrait of the Artist is that of a confused boy indulging in life as fully as possible, with the help of his art.
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