In the Very Point
For the analysis in this chapter, Goldmann’s method of wholeness-part and explanation-understanding are applied. The analysis on especially wholeness-part will be presented in the first section of this chapter with the focus on the structure of symbolism in A Portrait. Next, the second section will deal with the explanation-understanding part of this study.
Looking closely at the symbols, in a Hope of Finding a Uniformed Structure….
Symbols to analyze in this study are mostly the ones called symbolic act by Kennedy. As stated in previous condition, James Joyce is expert in symbolism. However, the most interesting fact is how he treats an action in his novel as a symbol by making a scrupulous selection of details that will give hints to things, whether it be an incident or an object familiar with the readers, especially Irish readers. There is always a reference for every single action in the novel.
The symbols taken are mainly the most influential symbol from each episode of the novel so that the structure of the novel can also be concluded from the analysis of those symbols. In every episode in the novel, there is a main theme implied.
Next, the dominating symbols in the novel are presented below altogether with the analysis on their motifs as an effort to understand the structure. Since what is analyzed here is the motif of a symbol, the analysis deals directly with symbols altogether with their references in order to know their motifs. Therefore, the references in the following analysis vary vastly.
a. Punishment from Dante
When Stephen is very young—the first time Stephen can perceive the world, as many critics say—his father tell him a story about “a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...” (p. 3). Afterwards, his father sings while his mother plays the piano. He is also with Dante and his granduncle Charles who also lives with him. Stephen wants to marry Eileen, a daughter of the Vances, a next door family. Dante is angry and asks Stephen to apologize or “if not, an eagle will come to pull out his eyes” (p. 4).
This part, the opening of the novel, is considered by critics as a part no critics can have a valid interpretation of since James Joyce makes a perfect pastiche of childish language which, as other techniques pervaded in Joyce’s works, can have multi-meanings. As an example, in this part, Stephen’s father tells a story about baby tuckoo. There have been many interpretation applied to this phrase, but “none of them [is] convincing” as Bob William notes (http://members.ozemail.com.au/~caveman/Joyce/POA/portrait_bw.htm).
Dante is angry at Stephen as he thinks that later when “[he and Eileen are] grown up he [will] marry Eileen” (p. 4). Then, Stephen hides under the table as Dante threatens that there will be an eagle that will come to pull out his eyes if he does not apologize for saying that. At a first reading, readers will surely have no idea what this is all about. What can be seen is that Stephen is wrong to think about that. However, as the reading goes on, in Christmas Dinner section, readers will know that Eileen is from a protestant family and Dante is a faithful Catholic—she has even studied in a convent years before. What is actually the matter between Catholic and Protestant?
Irish people have been Catholics since the coming of Norman-English people in 1169. England’s coming in the end of 16th century, after King Henry VIII established the Anglican Church to have permission for his second marriage, brought Protestantism to Ireland. Under the governance of Oliver Cromwell, the Protestant British became crueler to Irish Catholics.
What Dante does can be seen as the echo of Parnell’s teaching: boycott. Dante herself actually supports Parnell as the leader of a nationalist people before Parnell’s credibility collapsed in 1890 after being involved in a divorce trial as a “provoker”. Of Dante’s resentment on Parnell, analysis on Christmas Dinner section will explain more. In his well-known speech, Parnell said:
“When a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted you must shun him on the roadside when you meet him, you must shun him in the streets of the town, you must shun him in the shop, you must shun him in the faurgreen and in the marketplace, and even in the place of worship, by leaving him alone, by putting him in a moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of his country as if he were the leper of old, you must show your detestation of the crime he has committed.”(ctrueman@wsgfl.org.uk, January 2003)
This is the tactic Parnell suggested to Irish people whose farmland had mostly been confiscated by the Plantation made since the 17th century. This tactic was firstly used against a land agent named Captain Charles Boycott (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopaedia 2003). The name itself since then became an English term for an action with the simple definition as stated by Parnell.
Meanwhile, Dante takes this action against a family of Protestant as the result of what Protestant people has done to the Catholic Ireland. Around the mid-17th century, England was governed by Oliver Cromwell, a Calvinist, a Protestant, who detested Catholic people very much (ctrueman@wsgfl.org.uk). Under his governance, England conquered Ireland and Scotland and was made a “feared military power in Europe”(Microsoft Encarta Encyclopaedia 2003). Later, in the early 19th century, the condition for the Roman Catholics became worse since the Anglican Church, also Protestant, disabled them: they were prohibited from teaching or acting as guardians and were forced to pay tithes for the establishment of the Anglican Church.
Dante is very abhorrent towards Protestant people and, thus, even tells Stephen not to play with Eileen, as narrated in the Christmas Dinner as Stephen is brooding. This part shows that what Dante does is analogous to an effort of fighting back against the Protestant people who had made the Catholic Irish suffered, also to an effort Irish People took to fight against English land usurper.
b. Longing for Home
In the first year of Stephen’s life in the Clongowes Wood College, Stephen does not feel comfortable because he is away from his family. “It [is] lovely [for Stephen] to be tired” (. . .) because when he is tired he can sleep soundly and wake up in the next day—it makes the days in Clongowes faster and the time to go home becomes much nearer. Therefore he is active in play as much as possible just in order to be tired. In the evening, “[a]fter supper in the studyhall he would change the number pasted up inside his desk from seventy seven to seventy six” (. . .) to mark the number of the days left to the start of Christmas vacation.
In this section, Stephen is presented as a young student who is always in a weak position. It is firstly shown during the playground football game.
“He [only] kept on the fringe of his line, out of sight of his prefect, out of the reach of the rude feet, feigning to run now and then. He felt his body small and weak amid the throng of players and his eyes were weak and watery. Rody Kickham was not like that: he would be captain of the third line all the fellows said” (. . .).
Through these sentences, he expresses his weak position. He is afraid to join the “throng of players” since his body is “small and weak”.
Although, the timing of Stephen’s entering his school is different from that of Joyce in order that the death of Parnell comes earlier, Stephen is considered younger than other students. If Parnell died in 1891, then Stephen must be around nine years old when he entered Clongowes Woods College.
Besides being subordinate to his schoolmates in terms of age, Stephen is also subordinate in terms of his father’s profession. He sees that his father is different from his fellows’ fathers since their fathers are magistrates while his father is not. It is actually due to the fact that, as stated in the fourth section of Chapter I, according to his father “his granduncle had presented an address to the liberator there fifty years before” and, therefore, he will always be accepted in that school: he will be “no stranger there”. However, since in this section has no idea of that, Stephen fells lower than them, especially when his friends ask him mockingly about his father’s profession.
These two things are a sort of torment Stephen feels during the early days of his life in Clongowes. They seem to magnify his longing to his parents. Longing to his parents itself has made Stephen uncomfortable to stay in Clongowes, moreover after feeling subordinate to his friends. It is even worse because the day before Stephen was shouldered by Wells, a bigger student, into a square dirty ditch.
The list of torments in Clongowes, a long with the narrative, grows longer as it is added with the “dark trees frightening to Stephen” near Clongowes, “a black dog the eyes of which are as big as carriage lamps” in the corridor to his room, and a ghost of “a marshal that has received his deathwound in a battlefield of Prague”. These minor torments surely adds to Stephen’s torments.
Everything in Clongowes torments him. As a way of lessening this, Stephen attempted to make the time go faster by being active in “[especially, indoors] play and study”. According to Stephen, play and study make him over and more tired in the evening and he can sleep soon and tomorrow will come sooner. Thus, the time feels faster and the Christmas holiday becomes nearer also. That “he [longs] to be at home and lay his head on his mother’s lap” shows that what Stephen really wants is being with his family.
Besides, Stephen also shows a kind of “day-counting” activity through his effort of making numbers of days left to the start of Christmas holiday that he pastes up inside his desk. This “day-counting” activity surely reminds me of a sort of activity done by prisoners in their jails when they count the remaining days they have to undergo there. James Joyce compares Clongowes, a dormitory school, to jail. Like jail, then, Clongowes is a place of depriving someone of his freedom of movement.
c. Christmas Dinner Incident
In this part, readers are presented with the full members of Stephen Dedalus’ family on the Christmas Dinner table. Stephen is at home for his Christmas holiday. Mr. Casey, a friend of Stephen’s father is invited to join the Christmas dinner. After a while, a quarrel explodes. It is between Simon Dedalus and Mr. Casey in one side against Dante alone in the other side. Dante is angry at Mr. Casey and Simon Dedalus’ supporting Parnell whom she considers an adulterer, while Simon Dedalus and Mr. Casey cannot take Dante’s words of supporting the priests of the Catholic Church who has interfered in the politics by deciding that Parnell has a low moral attitude. Stephen guesses that Dante must be right, but whom he likes is Mr. Casey. “[Stephen Dedalus likes] to sit near [Mr. Casey] at the fire, looking up at his dark fierce face. But his dark eyes were never fierce and his slow voice was good to listen to” (. . .).
The part chosen to be the focus in this section is Stephen’s dislike and like. Here, it is shown that Stephen likes Mr. Casey and dislikes Dante. Although there is no explicit expression stating that Stephen hates Dante, Bob William translate this as a sign of Stephen’s dislike. Saying nothing about liking is, according to William, a delicate way to express disliking. Of course, knowing this a question rises in a reader’s mind: what makes this so?
Coming back to section I, Dante threatens to punish Stephen when Stephen thinks of marrying Eileen. It itself has been a deep concern in Stephen’s mind. In James Joyce’s stream of consciousness, every incident that occurs is actually in the mind of a narrator when narrating this story to the readers. It can be inferred from James Joyce’s statement as quoted by Richard Brown (James Joyce, 1992: xii) in the introduction of the Everyman’s Library edition of A Portrait saying that “events in the past, when they happened, are not experienced as past but as present and that a narrative should therefore try to recapture the ‘fluid succession of presents’ that this implies”. When a thing appears in the story, it means that it is in the memory of the narrator. A thing is in the memory of someone of course when it is of importance in his life. This incident with Dante in section I is also of important in Stephen’s mind in a negative sense. It is the first time of Stephen’s consciousness wake, or, according to Kenner (John Barger, 2001), the wake of “the entire action in microcosm”. Stephen is forbidden to love someone by Dante. Stephen’s has been deprived of his right to love.
Stephen likes Mr. Casey because he likes to see Mr. Casey’s face with his “dark eyes [which is] never fierce”(. . .) and his slow voice which is good to listen to. Understanding of Stephen’s family likeness will throw light upon this symbolism. As stated in the first section of the previous chapter, Stephen’s family is very close to the art of singing, as well as the Joyces. In the first page of the novel, readers are presented with the Simon Dedalus who sings and Mrs. Dedalus who plays piano and Stephen Dedalus himself who also sings the fragments of Lily Dale with some words changed. In chapter IV, readers can also see that the children of Mr. and Mrs. Dedalus sing in a small choir the song Oft in the Stilly Night. These two examples show that the Dedaluses love the art of singing. John Stanislaus Joyce, James Joyce’s father, is an admired soprano in Dublin and Mary Jane Joyce, James Joyce’s mother, was also a good pianist. Liking the slow voice of Mr. Casey, which represents Stephen’s fondness of arts in general, shows Stephen’s tendency to love art more than the strict Catholic faith Dante has, although he actually perceives that “Dante must be right”. Stephen’s tendency to art is shown here for the first time in the novel.
As acknowledged today, art is identical to freedom. Freedom is what Stephen covets, not Dante’s truth which has been proven to have threatened him as shown in the first section of chapter I when Stephen thinks of marrying Eileen who is from a Protestant family Dante considers wrong.
d. Father Dolan’s Flogging
When Father Dolan came into Stephen’s class to flog lazy students, Stephen also get one because according to Father Dolan Stephen is a “lazy idler little loafer”(. . .). Stephen tries to explain that the day before he has broken his glasses and according the doctor he may not read or write without wearing glasses. However, Father Dolan thought he is a “lazy idler little loafer” and the reason he proposed reason was “an old schoolboy trick”. After the flogging, Stephen was so upset with the mixture of angry and shame and could not take it. It was unfair. That was why he reported that incident to the rector.
This part shows how the young Stephen has got the concept of “fair-unfair”. Flogging a student for a mistake he does not do is an unfair thing. How come Father Dolan thought that his reason is “an old schoolboy trick”(. . .)? To him, this judgment is too one sided since Father Dolan has nothing to prove it. This one sided judgment is made worse with the flogging which is too much painful for the weak watery eyed Stephen, while Stephen actually has tried to tell Father Dolan about it.
From here readers can see that the young Stephen has been a critical boy. What he wants to do is a good effort for someone who searches for justice. Moreover, he also thinks that he is right as, according to his fellows, “[t]he senate and the Roman people [declare] that Dedalus [has] been wrongly punished”(. . .).
This can be interpreted as a kind of net as referred in chapter V with Stephen’s saying that “[w]hen the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight”(. . .). In the explanation of the sentence, Stephen’s utterance saying that “nationality, language, and religion” are the nets that hold someone back from flight. Stephen’s freedom of speaking, as analogous to flight, is restrained by a “prefect of studies” who does not believe in Stephen when he adds Father Arnall’s explanation that he has broken his glasses by saying that it happened in the cinderpath. Father Dolan even judges that it is “an old schoolboy trick”. It seems that Father Arnall behaves as if what he thinks is the right thing. James Joyce himself has a negative sentiment towards anything that gives him restraint.
Father Dolan has his own regulation for Stephen to comply with, whereas it is not always right. Stephen himself has proven that Father Dolan is mistaken when he says that Stephen is a “schemer” because “he always [gets] the card for first or second and [is] the leader of the Yorkists” and that Father Dolan is wrong when he says that Stephen’s reason for not writing is “an old schoolboy trick” because he has broken his glasses in the cinderpath. Therefore, Stephen took his flight from Father Dolan’s regulation by reporting to the rector, Father Conmee, for complying in Father Dolan’s regulation makes him suffer another flogging on every single day until the glasses come.
This incident is a very crucial one in the structure of the novel. As Richard Brown believes (1992), every single chapter of the novel shows how Stephen tries to catch up his dream and reaches it at the end of the novel and then has the dream destroyed in the beginning of the next chapter. In this chapter, Stephen begins his life in Clongowes as a student subordinate to the others, but after some effort he eventually can be more than equal to his friends and even higher than a Father because of his bravery of telling on this father’s mistake.
e. Interest in The Count of Monte Cristo
Stephen is now at home for holiday but he will not be sent again to the Clongowes because of his family’s economic decline. During this free time, Stephen routinely accompanies his uncle doing errands to the city. After finishing that duty, he and his uncle Charles go to the town square to have an athletic training instructed by Mike Flynn, a friend of his father’s. Afterward, his uncle usually takes him to a chapel to pray. Stephen respects, “although [does] not share, his piety”. Stephen wonders what his uncle is praying for. At nights, he usually reads “a ragged translation of The Count of Monte Cristo”. He is obsessed by the figures in the novel, especially the Mercedes. It is this novel that interests him more than such real things around him as Uncle Charles and Mike Flynn.
It is the first part of the novel where Stephen shows his sign of being not pious. Stephen is not a pious boy, as explicitly stated as he says that “he [kneels] at [his uncle] respecting, though he [does] not share, his piety”. This seems to be rather contradictory to the fact that he has studied in Clongowes, a school institution handled by Jesuits. The decreasing faith seems to be caused by the emerging sexuality during his puberty. Reader’s questioning is later answered with the following sentences, the sentences of Stephen’s thought about his uncle’s praying. That “he often [wonders] what his uncle [prays] for so seriously” shows Stephen’s cynical attitude against spiritual activities as such. The seriousness of his uncle becomes a mock to him. What great matter needs a serious prayer as such? Next, in his mind Stephen even juxtaposes the two possibilities of the dedication of Uncle Charles’ so seriously praying: whether the prayer is dedicated to a spiritual tendency, as implied in “the souls in purgatory” or “the grace of happy death”, or is dedicated to a physical tendency “a part of the big fortune [uncle Charles has] squandered in Cork”.
Finding the correlation between religion and the worldly life seems to have brought the seeds of atheism to the world. In a serious context, Marx’s conception of religion as something that deprives man of his humanity is a systematical interpretation of it. Marx thinks that “religion only shows radical condition of a man becoming the victim of an inhuman economy” (Leahy, 1985: 94). The source of religious alienation—Marx’s term for the condition of a man ostracized form the life as a human being to the spiritual world of religion—is economical alienation. The pressure of economy drives a man away from his worldly life to the spiritual life depending mainly on God. In a unique expression, Marx thinks that “a man moves aside to heaven because he cannot take the bitter reality of the world” (Adian, 2001: 8). Stephen’s second questioning whether his uncle prays for “the good fortune” has the same conception as the one stated by Marx above: God is a destination to run away to. Stephen’s thought of religion to have a correlation to the worldly life itself makes him face of risk of being led ashtray when he finds that worldly needs cannot be satisfied by religion; he will be disappointed.
In addition to the previous idea, to James Joyce, religion for children is seen as something that keeps the protagonist “in captive” (Lee, 1958). Kristina Lee points this in an essay discussing about the three short stories in Dubliners—The Sister, An Encounter, and Araby all the protagonists of which are young lads—entitled Dubliners: An Analysis of Religion as A Captor. Religious captor seems to manifest in the forms of a priest giving religious teachings to a boy until the boy loses his freedom of playing with other children, a priest teaching in a Christian Brother’s school who restricts the freedom of his students’ reading.
In this section of A Portrait, Stephen enjoys reading literature as an escape. Literature gives freedom of thought because of the stimulus of a text. Stephen enjoys translating his imagination of the setting of The Count of Monte Cristo in the form of “a wonderful island cave out of transfers and paper flowers and colored tissue paper and strips of the silver and golden paper in which chocolate is wrapped” (. . .) on the parlor table. This freedom of imagination is contradictory to athletics training and visiting the chapel with his uncle which both are not of his own intention. Literature here becomes the symbol of freedom.
The choice of book itself, The Count of Monte Cristo, seems to have, at least, two certain significances as a symbol. Firstly, the novel is one by a French writer named Alexandre Dumas (1802-1807). A reader can pose a question why it should be a novel written by a French author, not an English one. French itself has long been a symbol of freedom since the break of French Revolution in the 18th century with its motto “liberté, egalité, et fraternité" or liberty, equality, and fraternity. Secondly, relevant to Stephen’s strict athletics training and his uncle’s taking to the chapel to pray, one of the themes of the novel which is, according to www.novelguide.com, a religious moral stating the supremacy of God, gives a certain teaching to Stephen in an unrestraining way. Through this novel, Stephen gets the teaching in an artistic way, not in the form of a strict-depressing doctrine such as one found in catechism, as the way the priest takes in The Sister.
Concludingly, Stephen’s reading The Count of Monte Cristo is a symbol of escape in that Stephen gets away from the strict ways of teaching his uncle and Mike Flynn give him and also the way of escape from religion as the captor that can snatch the freedom of a child away.
f. Poem Writing
Stephen is invited to a party with children of his age. He only broods and moves away from his friends. After the party is over, he goes home by tram together with the girl she has a crush on, Eileen. In the tram, he was tempted to kiss her while
“she [comes] up to his step many times and [goes] down to hers again between their phrases and once or twice [stands] close beside him for some moments on the upper step, forgetting to go down, and then [goes] down” (p. 83),
but he is afraid. The next day, at home, he tries to write a poem about the meeting with the girl and he makes it.
Writing a poem for Stephen in this part is a way to more than express what he feels. Expressing feeling is a sort of way to escape a burden. The thought of his failure to kiss her haunts him and it is that makes Stephen write a poem. He dedicates the poem to a girl named E—C—. From Stephen Hero, the work considered by many critics the embryo of A Portrait, the girl’s name is Emma Clerry, the first girlfriend of Joyce’s in the real life (www.robotwisdom.com). Years before, in the story, Stephen tried to write a poem about the death of Parnell but he failed. In the real life, James Joyce actually wrote a poem about Parnell when he was very young and his father sent the poem for print, but no copies survives so far.
The poem itself tells about a meeting of a couple of lovers. Stephen perfectly prevents the putting of the tram, the trammen and the horses into the verses. Instead,
“the verses [tells] only of the night and the balmy breeze and the maiden lustre of the moon. Some undefined sorrow [is] hidden in the hearts of the protagonists as they [stand] in silence beneath the leafless trees and when the moment of farewell [has] come the kiss, which [has] been withheld by one, [is] given by both” (p. 85).
That these two sentences clearly show an imaginary compensation for his failed attempt to kiss Eileen is in line with Freud’s notion (Ratna, 2003: 13) that a work of art is the product of “someone introvert or suffering neurosis, a product of man that cannot accept daily realities”.
In this symbolic act, there is a binary opposition between failure and success. By failure, I refer to Stephen’s unattained desire to kiss Eileen in reality. On the other hand, success here points to the act of kissing—a kissing which is done by both—between the characters in the poem, the imaginary world. Failure in reality is compensated by a success in the imaginary level. From this part, art shows that it has a major role in Stephen’s effort to escape restraint.
g. Torments for Stephen’s Heresy
At Belvedere School, Stephen is a “model youth” and thus assumed to be a perfect student. One day, before performing in the Whitsuntide Play, Stephen encounters his friends, Vincent Heron and Wallis. Prior to meeting Stephen, Heron and Wallis saw a girl, E—C—, talking to Stephen’s father asking how Stephen is. They have decided that she must have been Stephen’s girlfriend. Half-jokingly, the two friends tormented Stephen with a stick to make him confess that the girl was Stephen’s girlfriend. As Heron shouts “confietor” or “admit”, Stephen’s mind is drawn back to the close of his first term in Belvedere. At that time Stephen had been found to write unintentionally heretic sentence in his essay at school. The teacher had forgiven him that day, but there are three students who could have not taken that and tormented him in a dark lane. They had forced him to admit that Lord Byron is not a good poet. Stephen, tormented and being not able to take the pain, had run away with tears in his eyes. But now, in the encounter before the play, since Stephen and Vincent Heron are good friends, he only admitted that the girl was his girlfriend just in order to be free from Heron’s torment.
The symbol I want to discuss here is Stephen’s choice of Lord Byron (1788-1824) as “the greatest poet” which reflects Stephen’s appreciation of beauty in art as something secular. Lord Byron, as many know, has been acknowledged for his amoral way of life, whether it be only rumor or fact. Rumors during his life said that he had done incest and had increasing debts that forced him to leave England for Italy to join Percy Bissey Shelley and Marry Shelley and Claire Clairmont, his second wife later(www.online-literature.com). The site also shows that Byron had an immense influence on European poetry, music, opera and painting. However, people, especially Englishmen, condemned him on moral ground. His writing is very beautiful, but to Englishmen in his era moral attitude gave the most powerful value to a man; therefore, no matter how clever a man was he would be condemned if he did not have a good moral attitude. Heron even judges Lord Byron not with a poetical basic, but for its moral. This can be seen from Heron’s statement saying that Byron is “only a poet for uneducated people”. Heron, a smart adolescent, takes what people so far believe about Byron’s private life, not his works. While Stephen, he has the idea of art as something separate from moral.
This makes them think that he has meant the heresy in his essay, whereas he has admitted the sentence to be unintentionally made to be heretic after his teacher judges that part to be heresy. It is when a teacher finds Stephen has the sentence of “without a possibility of ever approaching nearer” (p. 96) in his essay. His teacher considers it to be heretic. Without any explicit reason, Stephen corrects that sentence so that it appeases his teacher.
James Joyce’s taking Lord Byron as a detail in his novel, I think, is not because of coincidence. The life of Lord Byron is comparable to the life of Parnell. Lord Byron once was a member of the House of Lords (starting from 1809), a group of honorable people consisting of “bishops of the Church of England and hereditary and life peers”. At that time, he was a nobleman. Nevertheless, as his poetry style gets better around 1812, he was forced to leave England just because rumors talk about his incest. Parnell also had such similar fate in his political career. Just as his effort to free Ireland from under the colonialism of England almost hit the point, he was forced to stop his movement just because people do not believe him—as he was considered amoral—after his scandal with Katherine O’Shea was uncovered.
While Stephen takes Lord Byron as the greatest poet, Heron takes Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) as one. Stephen, adversely, considers him only a rhymester, a poet who is good in making poems with rhyming lines of poor quality verses. His strictly rhyming lines express “Victorian feeling for order and harmony” (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2003). However, the explanation of Lord Tennyson’s poems is not as simple as poems having “rhyming lines of poor quality verses”. Lord Tennyson is a Victorian poet who, as many other Victorian writers who took moral values for their topics in order to contribute to stabilize the unsettling social consciousness since the development of science and industry that threatens people’s faith, wrote about moral and religious teachings. For Stephen adores the secular beauty of art or literary works, he sees this kind of art as promising no freedom of expression. Succumbing to the tight rope of order always seems to be Stephen’s objection since he is this young. Romantic poets, with their sense of freedom and revolution, attract Stephen more than Victorian poets do.
Idolizing Lord Byron symbolizes Stephen’s rebellion against poetry in Victorian era, the era he is in. To him, Victorian era represents the succumbing of art to moral and religious teachings. Therefore, he runs to idolize a romantic poet as an escape.
h. Foetus Attraction
In Cork, when Stephen accompanies his father to do a business of heritage selling, his father takes him to his old school. There, his father searches for the desk he has made a scratch on. When his father shows the scratch, he does not feel anything; however, when he finds the word “Foetus” scratched on a desk, all at once a flash of image strikes him, an image of some students of the old time making a scratch on the desk.
Stephen’s scorn against his father is shown for the first time here in this section. During the train trip to Cork, Simon Dedalus tells his “evocation of Cork and of scenes of his youth” (p. 105) all the time to Stephen who listens “without sympathy”. Stephen is no more Stephen who would listen to the story about “a moocow coming down along the road” (p. 3). Stephen becomes a boy who grows to be a man who later will call his a father “a praiser of his own past” (p. 303). Stephen is sick with his father’s talking about his past, a beautiful past. The only part of this section where Stephen shows his respect to his father is when he in Victoria Hotel compliments his father’s come all you, Irish vernacular song, as the best one among the other he has sung.
The symbolic act which I take to be the focus of this section falls on Stephen’s imagination as he sees the word “foetus” scratched on a desk in the anatomy theatre of Queen’s College. It is this scratch that gives him a sudden lightning of imagination, not the scratch his father made when he studied in this college. There are some interpretations for this symbol. Richard Brown, in the introduction for Modern Library edition of A Portrait writes that:
“[f]or some critics this represents another image of his shy or guilty temperament but for others it represents a radical change in his thinking, asserting his own ‘narrative’ over that provided for him by his father or even implying a victory of the maternal, ‘foetal’ loyalty over the paternal one in his mind.”
I rather take the second interpretation: that it represents “a radical change in his thinking”. The incidents taking place previously, to me, support this. Stephen seems rather irritated by his father’s story of his past, the time when he was great, while at the time being he cannot keep his family economic condition, the economic condition that forces him to sell his property in Cork. There is a sense of disrespecting his father because of being disappointed. Here, in this room of Anatomy Theater, Stephen finds something that is not of his father, something maternal: foetus.
As a conclusion, Stephen unconsciously expresses his longing for freedom from his father as he is interested in the word foetus. Foetus, something that does not belong to his father, symbolizes something that his father does not dictate him, something that his father does not tell him to. Interestingly, out of the 318 pages of the novel, why should James Joyce put the proclamation of Stephen’s scorn of his father in this section? For a complete study, a deliberate reader of Joyce’s works should not neglect the putting of Victoria Hotel and Queen’s college into this section. Stephen’s situation of being under pressure by his father is magnified by the nuance of the two colonialist names of the place for Stephen and Simon Dedalus to stay, Victoria Hotel, and the college where Simon Dedalus used to study, Queen’s College. These two places are ones Simon Dedalus has chosen for them. This is another sign of Simon Dedalus’ dictation to Stephen. Dictation, similar to the Interest in the Count of Monte Cristo section, is something Stephen dislike. This is another sign of Joyce’s scrupulous meanness in selecting details for his story which is in the same tone as the one a reader finds in one story of Dubliners entitled Ivy Day in the Committee Room in which the day chosen to be the day of the story is the death anniversary of a defeated nationalist—the day that asserts England’s power upon Ireland (see Biography, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and James Joyce’s Symbolism, Chapter II).
i. Intercourse with a Prostitute
After Stephen’s money runs out, he comes again to the life he used to have. Again, the figure of the Mercedes comes back again to his mind. He loves walking again in order to be alone and ponder on many things including the Mercedes. One day, he follows the steps of his feet to Nighttown, a red light district in Dublin. There, he meets a whore with whom he succumbs to his sexual desire. During the initiation of his sexual intercourse, Stephen wants to be treated as a boy who needs love and care. It is the one he needs since very young.
This is one vital section in the novel, because it is the closing of a chapter; as stated above, quoted from Richard Brown, every closing of every chapter shows Stephen’s success in reaching up his dream. Here, the success is symbolized by a sexual intercourse between Stephen and a whore.
Throughout the chapter, readers are presented with such signs of Stephen’s puberty as his imagination of Mercedes after reading The Count of Monte Cristo, his covetousness to kiss E—C— when he goes home from the party, and the “mad and filthy orgies”, which according to Bob William (http://members.ozemail.com. au/~caveman/Joyce/POA/portrait_bw.htm) is the sign that “Stephen is sexually mature and masturbating”. For a discussion on puberty and sexual behavior, Sigmund Freud’s theory on stages of psychosexual development is unavoidable (. . .). Freud states that there are five stages of psychosexual development, they are:
1. Oral stage (age 0 – 1,5): a stage in which satisfaction is attained through oral contact such as eating, sucking, gumming, biting and swallowing.
2. Anal stage (age 1,5 – 3): a stage in which satisfaction is attained through controlling bowel movement; the erogenous organ in this stage is anus.
3. Phallic stage (age 4 - 5): a stage in which satisfaction is attained through the fondling of genital and masturbation.
4. Latency (age 5 – puberty): a stage “during which sexual feelings are suppressed to allow children to focus their energy on other aspects of life” (http://psychology.about.com/library/weekly/aa111500b.htm).
5. Genital stage (from puberty on): a stage during which sexual interest and desire is renewed and the need of a relationship appears, a stage during which the satisfaction is attained through masturbation and heterosexual relationship.
The chapter itself deals with the span of time from Stephen’s latency and genital stage. It is not an exaggeration that James Joyce took Sigmund Freud’s theory on psychosexual stages in life. James Joyce had a certain interest in psychoanalysis. He even went to Vienna in order to be able to study psychoanalysis deeply.
Although not precisely alike, Stephen’s days in Blackrock, when he trains running might occur when Stephen is in genital stage, simultaneous with the rise of his puberty. It is the time when he is interested in imagining about the Mercedes, the beginning of his genital stage. His sexuality matures as the time goes by and by the time he goes to Cork he has done “mad and filthy orgies” (p. 111) which is interpreted by Bob William as masturbation. During this time, Stephen’s longing for a female figure is not fulfilled but always increases. The figure of a female is firstly in the form of a Mercedes, an imaginary woman. Later, the female figure finds its shape in E—C—, a girl that can be touched. Finally, the female figure is not only a figure to touch but also to gratify his sexual desire, a function that cannot be met by a young girl named E—C—. Therefore, he runs away to prostitute, a woman that can easily fulfill his desire.
Gratification of a drive is comparable to a scratching for the itchy skin, an eating to gratify the hunger, etc. It is an effort of diminishing discomfort. Therefore, Stephen’s succumbing to the sexual drive can be interpreted as an effort to escape the discomfort he feels during his genital stage.
j. Mary the Refuge of Sinners
In this section, Stephen has been accustomed to visit the brothel. Nevertheless, the Catholic Doctrines implanted in his heart makes him feel that what he does is forbidden. He feels himself dirty and has no right to come nearer to God. As acknowledged by Catholics, Mary, the mother of Jesus is the Refuge o Sinner. He runs to Mary then.
In this section, readers are presented with Stephen Dedalus who is once again made fall from the condition he has striven wholeheartedly. Stephen, who previously feels that sexual drive is the best solution to express himself as a young man, now feels remorse for that. What he has thought as an ideal now becomes a great blunder, something that he should not have done.
This remorse is triggered by the religious doctrines he has learned long before. The doctrines also teach that he is now a filthy man. As a filthy man, he feels that he does not deserve to approach Jesus. This makes him run to Mary, who is known to be the Refuge of Sinners.
Stephen’s running to Mary shows his will to find a savior for his sinful soul. For a sinner as he is, the only refuge is Mary, the one who always welcome the coming of anybody, even a sinner.
k. Confession
As Stephen fell deeper in the mortal sin of sexual intercourse with whores, his school Belvedere College hold a retreat sermon to commemorate the patron of the college, St. Francis Xavier, the Apostle of Indies. This sermon, which was on the torment of hell, had a very great impact on “the sensitive and impressionable Stephen”—as Richard Brown wrote—who actually has made the mortal since, the sin that will throw him to the eternal torment of hell in which “at the end of […] billions and trillions of years, eternity would have scarcely begun”. After following the sermon, Stephen made a confession in a dark chapel outside the school environment.
It is a rather unique case in which Stephen who has been a brutal boy now confesses. Readers may wonders what causes this. It is so because Stephen is in a very weak position during the sermon. This seems to relate to the priest giving the retreat sermon: father Arnall. Father Arnall is the Latin teacher appears for the first time in chapter I of the novel, when Stephen studies in Clongowes. Bob William sees this as very influential since the coming of father Arnall “reduces Stephen’s status of a child” (. . .). As a child, he can be easily influenced, or, to take Richard Brown’s phrase (Joyce, 1991), “sensitive and impressionable”.
During the retreat, Stephen is in a great tremor. The sermon, which is actually modeled on very closely to a book entitled Hell Opened to the Christians by Giovanni Pietro Pinamonti (1632-1703), an Italian. This book was well received in Dublin since 1868 (www.robotwisdom.com\jaj\portrait\hellcompare. html). The sermon itself is very terrifying that it was included in an anthology of Irish horror stories. The torments of hell is presented so vividly and “terrifyingly detailed” (beginning with the “the straitness of the prison of hell” and then followed with “the quality of the fire, the company of the damned, the pain of loss, the sting of conscience,” and ended with “despair on account of the extension of the pains of hell”) that it intensely stores fear into Stephen’s mind.
The fear culminates right after the retreat has ended and Stephen has decided not to confess in the college chapel because of shame. It is when he is in his attic that he fancies seeing “[g]oatish creatures with human faces, hornybrowed, lightly bearded and grey as indiarubber” (. . .) in Stephen’s dream. Actually, there is no explicit explanation where this happens, in dreams, imagination, or fancy, but I assume this as happening in Stephen’s dream since James Joyce never gives explicit indication whether something happens in the dream or in imagination; for example, there is no clear indication whether the coming of Christmas holiday in chapter I occurs in his dream but readers know this as Stephen finally wakes up(. . .), and the dream of Stephen’s being buried the next day after the previously stated dream. Mostly known nowadays that dream is the result of a subconscious process in someone’s mind. The great terror of hell comes deeper into Stephen’s subconscious mind altogether with, according to Bob William, Stephen’s memory of the “filthy cowyard at Stradbrook with its foul green puddles and clots of liquid dung and steaming bran-troughs [that sickens] Stephen's heart”(. . .).
For the tremor, confession which promises the forgiveness from God and prevention from hell is the only way out. CONFESSION IS THE ONLY WAYOUT FOR SINNERS.
Stephen’s making confession in the dark chapel in Church Street itself, not in the school chapel, is also a way to escape from the risk being ashamed if his mortal sin is caught. Therefore, he comes to the chapel of the Capuchin, an order people consider to be low in degree—but for this low degree Stephen considers them to be nearer to God since God is close to those who suffers.
Those two causes show that Stephen makes a confession in the dark chapel symbolize Stephen’s desire to be free. It is the freedom from, in one sense, the pressure he gets in his mind because of his fear from the torments of hell—that is, in the form of a confession—and also from, in the other sense, the pressure of shame he will get if his mortal sin is known to the priests managing his college—that is, in the form of a confession in a chapel far way from his college. As an addition, this part which is also the closing of chapter three also shows Stephen’s victory, as similar to the closing of chapter I and II of the novel. The dream Stephen to be able to find a couple to channel his sexual drive as a young man which is reached in the end of the chapter II has been destroyed in the beginning of Chapter III with the understanding of his Catholic doctrines that makes him conscious that what he has done is a sin. This sense of sin which tremors him finally is defeated by Stephen’s confession occurring in this part, the closing of chapter III.
l. Piety as Burden
As Stephen has confessed, he becomes more pious, or even saintly. He ponders about many things in life in relation to theology and reaches a state where he thinks that everything in life has been predestined. His piety also pushes him away from his friends and it makes him feel that religion is now a burden to him. For that reason, he now considers to stay rather away from religion.
Stephen’s free thought becomes harmful
Finally, doubts overwhelm his mind and capture it in the state of confusion.
m. Rejecting to be Priest
As implied in the previous section, Stephen in this section is also critical to his religious teachings although he never expresses this: “. . . and even when he doubted some statement of a master he had never presumed to doubt openly” (. . .). In spite of being critical, Stephen is still seen as an obedient and pious student—he is even the member of Sodality of the Blessed Virgin. Therefore, his friends and teachers respect him. Finally, the director of Belvedere offered him to enter the vocation to be priest. Stephen thought about it for sometime and considered about the good and bad sides of being a priest. His pride drives him to accept the offering, but his common sense questions the freedom he will lose as he becomes a priest. Moreover, he lately sees that “some of their judgments [has] sounded a little childish in his ears and [has] made him feel a regret and pity as though he [is] slowly passing out of an accustomed world and [is] hearing its language for the last time” (. . .). What the priests say are frequently illogical and does not make sense. After coming home from the director’s office, that he “[wonders] how he [will] pass the first night in the novitiate and with what dismay he [will] wake the first day in the dormitory” fill his mind and it branches into many other similar subjects. The last thing comes to Stephen’s mind is his thought on the way he will find his own wisdom, that is by learning it himself.
Readers are reminded to the beginning of chapter four of the novel where Stephen feels that religion may hold him back from his friendship and other relationship—which has been the precedent for this incident. Now, as he is offered this opportunity to become a priest, he sees that this could be an assertion that he feels fine to bear the burden, the burden from which he cannot escape forever.
This rejection implies Stephen’s run from restraint of his religion to the free life he has not conceived yet. Actually, Stephen has not decided yet to serve a certain profession. However, here he has decided to see religion as a captor. It is not something that matches his character as a man of free soul. In this part only, according to some critic, Stephen’s eagerness to earthly beauty of a girl shows how he has been fond of beauty, art.
n. Walk to the Beach
When his father met the rector of the University College of Dublin, Stephen was so nervous that he walked to and fro between the terraces of Clontarf Chapel and Byron’s Publichouse. As he could no longer take the pressure of his nervousness, he finally walked down the “maze” of Dublin streets until he reached the seacoast.
This represents Stephen’s escape from the terror of worldly physical science that restrains him to the inspiring artistic life which is very vast and unlimited as the horizon in the sea. However, this escape from worldly science is still shown symbolically—or, in poetry theory, it is an alliteration which gives the precedent of what will happen next. The physical escape itself is actually shown in the final part of the novel where Stephen decides to go away from his Ireland
Sea, as many people see, has long been the symbol of freedom. It is the place where someone can see the horizon without any border.
The word road itself is believed to have a certain significance in the novel. It can bee seen from the selection of this word to be a motif in the novel.
o. “Tundish” as an English Word
When Stephen is late for his lesson, he goes directly to the theater where physics is later taught. There he has a conversation with the dean of studies. In the conversation, Stephen uses the word “tundish” and the dean of studies does not understand it and even uses the word “tunnel” which actually has the same meaning as the former. Implicitly, the dean of studies claims that he is an Englishman, the owner of the English language. Meanwhile, Stephen who thinks that it was an English word says that people in Lower Drumcondra uses that word in conversation—Drumcondra, as Stephen says jokingly, is the place “where [people] speak the best English” (. . .). After the word has been in his mind for a long time and looked it up, he found that it was an English word and “good old blunt English” (. . .). In his heart he has a cynical question: “What did [the dean of studies] come here for to teach us his own language or to learn it from us” (. . .).
Colonialism once again shows itself in the novel. This small detail shows how English people claim to be the owner of the language Irish people speak. Thus, they hold the standard of right and wrong in the use of the language. Colonialism is strongly felt in this context, although there is no clear sign of pressure given from one side to the other side. It is in the cultural locus. More precisely, it is in language. An Englishman shows his authority as the owner of the English language, by doubting the validity of a word as an English word. An Irish person, a user also of the English language, is questioned when he uses a word (he considers English) an Englishman does not understand.
Stephen’s discomfort can be seen from the sentence “[t]hat tundish has been of my mind for a long time”. Stephen tries to comfort himself by finding a support for himself; that is, by looking it up.
Irish people themselves have an interesting experience with language. Many Irish people try to campaign for the renaissance of their own language, Gaelic, for example in the Gaelic League movement (chapter 5). However this movement cannot be said to be a successful movement since the language itself was almost dead in the time of James Joyce. And in “The Dead” James Joyce also exemplifies this with a conversation between a woman, a supporter of Irish language renaissance, with a man considered to be “white Brighton”—name given to Irish people who do not support the Home Rule Movement—in which the woman call the Celtic by saying “Irish” a name of the language as it is given by the English people.
Joyce’s ancestors underwent the condition when speaking Gaelic was prohibited by the government.
* * *
Those symbols also contribute to the full plot structure of the novel which is known to be dialectical. What is meant by dialectical here is that the beginning of a chapter begins with a condition in which Stephen Dedalus is inferior to something beyond him and ends with Stephen in an opposite state.
From the previous section, it can be concluded that the structure of A Portrait is unique. It, as many critics also believe, has the so-called a dialectical pattern in its sequence of chapters. Every chapter begins with the protagonist in the state of low importance in any sense and ends with his victory, of course in any sense also. As concluded from the analysis in previous chapter, Stephen moves from the low importance state of “captivity” to the victory of “freedom”, from the family institution, country institution as well as the religious institution.
The flow of the plot runs as follows:
a. Chapter I deals with the wake of Stephen’s consciousness—a condition of a man with a very minimal, almost none, power—until he becomes a boy of nine or ten years old having his bravery to fight back the teacher considered wrong.
b. Chapter II deals with Stephen’s being dictated to follow uncle Charles and Mike Flynn’s instruction as he leaves Clongowes, the place where he has gained his first victory, and the wake of his puberty until later he strives to be able to express his sexual drive in the form of a sexual drive release.
c. Chapter III deals with Stephen’s fright with his adultery as he realizes that as a mortal sin until the time when he ends his fright with a confession in a dark chapel, a confession that guarantees to prevent him from the eternal damnation.
d. Chapter IV deals with Stephen’s realization that religion is another kind of burden that obstructs his freedom in life until he finally frees himself by rejecting to be a priest as well as leaving his religion, although not utterly, by choosing art as his way of life.
e. Chapter V deals with Stephen’s lack of freedom as an atheist among believers and Stephen’s discomfort for being forced to do his Easter duty by his mother until he finally decides to leave Ireland for the Continental Europe for freeing himself from the restraint of his family, country, and religion.
This novel, from the list above, has the will to freedom as its dominant motif, not only in the plot structure of the entire novel, but also the structure of each chapter. The novel is the story of Stephen’s development since very young until he grows up to be a young artist who feels having found his real identity while, at the same time, also has the motif of freedom-searching in its every single chapter. In spite of this coherence, at the beginning of its publication, many people judged this novel as anti-plot and, therefore, saw it as a weird novel.
Deeper, this motif of will to freedom is dominant in the structure of its symbolism which are the imaginary part of the novel.
For the next section, the analysis on the reciprocal relationship between the motif in symbolism in A Portrait and the structure of Irish Catholics in the end of 19th century.
Seeing the Symbols in the Light of Irish Catholics’ World Vision…
Irish Catholics’ world vision is basically formed by the hard life of Irish Catholics during the 17th-19th century which was mainly caused by the colonialism. Since the early 17th century, Ireland has been attacked and gnawed little by little by England. The first thing gnawed was the physical thing: land. As the time went by, Irish culture was started to be gnawed. The first thing was the religion, in the form of making the Anglican church the national church of Ireland, while, as stated in the previous chapter, Irish people were mostly Catholics. Later, when the Plantation were said to be succesful, the culture was intendedly gnawed by England. Although this one was not really succesful because of the more number of Irish Catholics than of the English and Scottisc Protestant settlers, the project of making English the language of Irish people seemed successful with the death of about one millions people during the Great Hunger of 1845-49 that caused the death of about one million Gaelic-speaking Irishmen living in remote places. The repression mainly comes from the colonialism. Even the incident of Parnell’s discharging from the parliament, which is said to be the manifestation of the repression of religion upon national life, was also in the scope of colonialism matter.
Unlike this historical fact, the novel A Portrait is dominated by the sentiment of religion as a captor. As presented in the previous section, this sentiment is pervaded in almost a half of the symbols analyzed in this study. This repression of religion is in a binary opposition with art as the expression of freedom.
For an adequate complete discussion, this section is based on three aspects, they are (1) repression from colonialism, (2) repression from religion, and (2) repression from other institutions.
a. Repression from colonialism
Colonialism had a very important role in the shaping of the world vision of Irish Catholics. As stated in Chapter II, before the successful Plantations made firstly in the 17th century, Irish people were uniformly Catholics. Catholicism was the first organized religion in Ireland. It was introduced by Norman Anglo who came to Ireland through Wexford and Waterford, two big harbor cities closest to England, after they conquered Wales in the 12th century. Afterwards, Norman Anglo people who were later called the Norman Irishmen could assimilate and live peacefully with the native settlers called the Gaelic Irish. However, in the era of Henry VIII, England once again attacked Ireland, but this time England came with Protestantism—a new religion after King Henry broke with the Roman Catholicism in order to be able to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon who could not give him a son and to marry another woman. Unfortunately, the Norman Irish and Gaelic Irish could not accept this religion while, on the other hand, most monarchs in the English throne was full of hatred towards Catholicism. Therefore, the Plantations were made, as stated in Chapter II, beginning with confiscations of Catholics’ land and the giving of this land to Protestant Englishmen to settle, and later become the causes of all sufferings for Irish Catholics. This confiscation later made the appearance of long lasting obsession to get back the land.
In this point, the opposing sides become clear, Protestant settlers and the Catholic natives, and even made the appearance of religious sentiments. It was so because Protestants, Scottish Presbyterians or English Anglicans, who came to Ireland through the Plantations, had a better fate than Catholics. During the Penal Laws, around the end of 17th century and the beginning of 18th century, Catholics were banned from having any position in the government and possessing land anywhere in Ireland. Religion became the source of many problems in Ireland. Catholics had a big abhorrence towards Protestants. In the novel, this kind of sentiment appears in the character of Dante, Stephen’s aunt.
Dante is said to be a strong Catholic, and once even studied in a convent although leaving it later, who has this abhorrence towards Protestantism. This is shown in the beginning of the novel when she threatens to punish Stephen when he dreams of marrying a next door girl who was from a Protestant family. Moreover, not only does she forbid the young Stephen from marrying Eileen, she also tells Stephen not to play with Protestant children as stated in the first chapter in the novel. This later plants the seed of Stephen’s idea that religion is a captor that prevents him even to hang around with other children from other religion, although the fact is actually a repression to play with Protestants whose descendants made Irish Catholics suffer.
Dante’s attitude itself is actually in line with the idea of boycott as proposed by Charles Steward Parnell and Michael Davitt during the last half of the 19th century. The number of Protestants in Ireland was so small then, but they hold a powerful position in the government. In A Portrait, Dante’s prohibiting Stephen to play with Protestant children echoes her intention to ostracize the small number of Protestants which is similar to the concept of boycott, in which there is an effort to shun someone from the rest of the society. The only different from the real boycott as pioneered by Parnell and Davitt is that what Dante does is based on religious sentiment while Parnell and Davitt did it based on the cruel and troubling attitude of landlords in Ireland. However, both show the similar spirit which emerges from those who are weak in position but strong in number.
This tendency to run away from repression emerges once again when Stephen is in the Queen’s College accompanying his father who wants to show him the scratch he has made in a desk during his study in the college. In the novel, Stephen makes an undramatic escape by paying more attention wholeheartedly to the scratch reading foetus, a word which does not belong to paternal jargon but to maternal jargon. Actually, there is no clear sign of colonialism in any utterance or thought Stephen makes. The sign of colonialism is in the name of the hotel, Victoria Hotel, and the college, Queen’s College, where Simon Dedalus takes Stephen to. Once again, Joyce’s scrupulous treatment on details must be of certain consideration when someone studies Joyce’s works. These two names strengthen the nuance of repression Stephen feels as being dictated to follow his father and to listen to his father’s stories. Thence, this undramatic break done by Stephen also means a break from other elements strengthening the nuance of the repression.
The symptom of the “will to freedom” world vision appears for the last time when Stephen jokingly debates the dean of studies when this English priest says that he does not understand the word tundish. As an Irishman born in the end of 19th century, Stephen does not experience the time when Gaelic language was spoken by Irish Catholics in general. In the end of the 19th century, English was spoken by most Irishmen but those living in remote places. The use of English shows the rule of England on Ireland. Here, the use of a strange word, may be of Gaelic language, in his English symbolizes a certain kind of fighting-back the effort to “anglicize” Ireland in terms of formalization of the use of English while he himself does not believe in the movement of coming back to the “Irish language renaissance”—as done by a friend of Stephen, Davin, in his Gaelic League. He does not believe in the movement because language is a “net” that can hold him back from flight or progress—when someone only speaks in one language, he will not be able to get knowledge which should be learnt in other countries having different language.
The effort of “Anglicization” itself was not only in terms of language, but also the effort of making Anglican church the formal church in Ireland. This effort was not very much successful in the first time, but after some generation Irish people became English speakers. However, in terms of the belief, Irishmen still hold Catholicism to be their belief. After many unsuccessful efforts to resist this hegemony of England, Irishmen finally find a way to fight it back by the so called Irish Renaissance which was in the forms of language revival, Irish traditional sport revival, and literature revival. In the novel, one example of the Renaissance is reflected in Stephen’s friends who join the Gaelic League and hurling sport, an Irish traditional sport.
b. Repression from religious institution
That the topics frequently found in Joyce’s symbols are religion is a rather crucial issue to discuss in any study on Joyce’s works because religion is one besides the other major theme in his work, art. Norton Anthology of English Literature points on the protagonist’s name to assert this notion. The name Stephen Dedalus is derived from the name of St. Stephen, the first martyr in the history of Christianity, and Daedalus, the first artificer who built the most complicated labyrinth and wings to fly in western mythology. Throughout the novel, religion with its any cause and effect is referred many times altogether with art in other parts of the same novel but with a certain connection.
Religion is in a binary opposition with art. Simple-structurally, the first chapter of this novel is immensely implanted with religious life in a dormitory and the last chapter is full of discussion of aesthetic theories, a creative process of Stephen’s poem and a discussion on achieving freedom for the sake of art. Basically, Stephen receives religion as something dictated by his family and educational institutions where he studies, while art is something he gets in his own interest. Stephen lives in the space and time in which religion has a strong influence while art—especially literature—, which is frequently seen as something secular, is always set aside by people.
This novel shows that religion is repressive while on the other hand art is the liberator. Religion is a net that holds him back from breaking through to mingle with friends from other religions in many aspects. James Joyce, through this novel, shows how religion has interfered in the secular life in a negative sense; that is, obstructing people’s way to happiness. Religion is surely seen as a captor by Stephen.
Even in the history of Ireland itself, religion is proven to be a repressive force when a political leader, Parnell, who was a promising person to free Ireland from under British colonialism, was forced to leave political stage when he was considered religiously and morally lack by Irish bishops. Religion which held an influential role could not separate political attitude from moral attitude. Actually, many people probably thought that the steps taken by the bishops was right, but for those who coveted freedom for Ireland this step was careless because independence which would have given much more important effects for the people of Ireland was once again unachieved, as many rebellious efforts taken by their predecessors.
Desire for freedom is then the result of this caption. In his longing to be free, Stephen finds art as something which holds someone loosely, something which is based on fondness, not on doctrines.
Here, will to freedom is seen clearly in the novel as more than just a will but rather an action. With art, Stephen can freely think about many things in life. Stephen’s delicate discussions on aesthetic theories with his friends as well as with the Dean of Studies in his university show his vastly ranging readings which are impossibly done in a repressed condition. Repression from religion results in Stephen’s desire for freedom that later is expressed through his finding and exploration of art and aesthetics. However, Victorian age did not see art for its own regards, a view on the artist was sometimes more influential to the beauty of artworks.
The case of Stephen’s interest in Lord Byron which drives his friends’ anger exemplifies the moral sentiment of Victorian Age even in seeing a work of art. This part refers to the resignation of Lord Byron from his seat in the House of Lords and people’s opinion that Byron’s works are bad because he was morally not good. The beauty of Byron’s works is nothing of considerations by Vincent Heron and his allies but to Stephen whose eyes can see the pure beauty of art. Vincent Heron and his allies idolize Lord Tennyson whose poems are full of religious, while on the other hand Stephen sees Lord Tennyson’s poem as something not more than just a collection of rhymes—as reflected in Stephen’s calling Lord Tennyson “rhymester”.
This same issue appears in another place of the novel, in Christmas Dinner episode where Stephen thinks about Dante who must be in the dispute between her and Stephen’s father on Parnell. As discussed in the analysis of the symbols, Stephen shows his like to Mr. Casey because he has a good voice although actually he knows that he was wrong compared to Dante who holds strongly religious doctrines. Religion and all its strict doctrines interests Stephen less than art, which is here represented by the good voice of Mr. Casey.
Once again, to compare to the events in the history, after having their dreams for independence once again shattered with the fall of Parnell from the political stage Irish intellectuals choose to search the Irish Ireland with the renaissance of Irish traditional art and sport. Art here becomes a way to escape the hard unpromising political effort for Ireland to show up itself in the international scope. William Butler Yeats, a man who has a certain role in Irish Literary Renaissance, was a then well-known by literature lovers for his attempts to introduce Irish mythology through his poems. Ireland became well-known to be the land where many great poets, such as William Butler Yeats, George William Russell (Æ), and others, were born.
The analysis on the symbol of The Count of Monte Cristo gives light to this effort to run to art as an alternative activity to do other than having athletic training and accompanying his uncle to go to a chapel to pray. The fact in this section can also be interpreted as Stephen’s less interest in doctrinal teachings such as religion than in teachings which are not doctrinal such as religious teachings which can be found in the story of The Count of Monte Cristo also telling the supremacy of God.
The culmination of Stephen’s fondness of art is reached when Stephen decides to leave his religion and chose art as his way of life which is the main topic of the fourth chapter after he realized that religion is really a captor for his from actualizing himself.
c. Repression from psychological condition.
Besides symbols of repressions from religious institution and from colonialism which were both really in taken from Irish history, the world vision of will to freedom is also found in Joyce’s symbols in the form of psychological conflicts which has the same motif: will to freedom. Stephen’s psychological condition, an element which is frequently studied by Joyce’s scholars, shows that Stephen is often caught in a condition which forces him to find an escape. Moreover, the novel itself has its form from some psychological conflicts that drives Stephen to move from one behavior to another.
This move from one behavior to another is seen clearly after a reader makes a scheme containing Stephen’s chapter by chapter psychological states. As I have repeated many times in the analysis of the symbols section, every chapter represents Stephen’s struggle to reach his dream until he reaches the victory which is then shattered into pieces in the beginning of the next chapter.
As I can conclude from the analysis on the symbols, the first chapter of the novel is full with Stephen’s subordination to his peers who are mostly older and stronger in Clongowes Woods College and ends with Stephen’s victory, a victory which raises him higher than his friends and one of his teachers. The symbol of day counting shows that Stephen feels uncomfortable to live in the dormitory because of his longing to his parents, his unkind friends and fears of ghosts and dark places in Clongowes. The last section of this chapter which shows Stephen’s victory in achieving his freedom from the discomfort he feels in this school symbolizes an effort taken by any man to run away from repression and be an independent man.
After being able to express himself as an independent boy, the second chapter shows how this independence is nothing in his new environment, family, in which he is only a young boy who should do what his elders dictate him to and also shows the emergence of Stephen’s puberty. The shadows of puberty appears for the first time in this chapter with Stephen’s idolization of the Mercedes, a female character in The Count of Monte Cristo, the novel he enjoys reading during his evenings in Blackrock. Stephen’s imaginations of the Mercedes embellish throughout the chapter mingling with his imagination of E—C—, the girl he loves. Stephen’s longing for the love of a woman which also reflects his lack of love culminates in his first sexual contact with a prostitute. Even in this sexual contact, Stephen shows the sign of love coveting as if what he needs is not sexual release, but caresses and hugs. However, this last action which is the last symbol of the second chapter is Stephen’s victory after the long struggle to cope with his desire to be loved.
The third chapter which shows Stephen’s realization that the sexual contacts he has done many times so far are wrong as they are faced to Catholic doctrines makes a new dream for Stephen: free from the torment of hell. This realization emerges when Stephen is faced to a retreat given by father Conmee on hell and its internal torments for those who have sinned against the Lord. This threat is so deeply planted in Stephen’s consciousness as well as his unconsciousness—as shown with Stephen’s dream. Finally, Stephen chose to confess in order that he get forgiveness from the Lord in the end of chapter three. This confession results in Stephen’s piety, a victory in the eyes of God.
Hitherto, this victory is then shattered by Stephen’s doubts that by being pious he might have turned from the role he has to play—the role to be an artist—and then ends with Stephen’s implicit decision to leave his religion. In this chapter, Stephen who has been seen as a pious student by his teachers feels uncomfortable with his present condition because he realizes that there are many things now that deprive him from his happiness. When he is offered the opportunity to be a priest, he sees this as a stronger repression because it will make him further away from many beautiful things in life, including woman. This chapter ends with his decision to reject the offering as well as to implicitly leave his religion.
The last chapter of the novel is the part where Stephen is presented as beginner artist who has made his own aesthetic theories but feels repressed in his own environment where piety is more important than art. This part begins with Mary Dedalus’ disappointment to see Stephen’s behavior of not respecting his father. Almost in the end of this chapter, Mary Dedalus asks Stephen to do his Easter duty but he would not do that. It makes him feel that he has to leave this country as an effort to get freedom from his religion, family as well as his country. Therefore, Stephen’s decision to leave Ireland represents his desire to find his own freedom to express himself in art.
This dialectical flow of the story echoes the world vision of Irish Catholics and has a certain similarity to efforts made by Irish Catholics since the era of Cromwell until the day James Joyce wrote the novel. Many efforts have been taken by Irish Catholics to get independence from Ireland, but many of them were unsuccessful. This formed the collective consciousness of Irish people, the consciousness to search for freedom. However, this consciousness was always accompanied with the risk that they would face failure.
