Portrait Of The Artist As Young Man
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Portrait Of The Artist As Young Man
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man By: Valerie Gomez Stephen Dedalus, the
main character in most of James Joyce’s writings, is said to be a reflection
of Joyce himself. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the reader follows
Stephen as he develops from a young child into a young artist, overcoming many
conflicts both internally and externally, and narrowly escaping a life long
commitment to the clergy. Through Joyce’s use of free indirect style, all of
Stephen’s speech, actions, and thoughts are filtered through the narrator of
the story. However, since Joyce so strongly identifies with Stephen, his
character’s style and personality greatly influence the narrator. This use of
free indirect style and stylistic contagion makes Joyce’s use of descriptive
language one of his most valuable tools in accurately depicting Stephen
Dedalus’s developing ideals of feminine beauty. As a very young child Stephen
is taught to idealize the Virgin Mary for her purity and holiness. She is
described to Stephen as "a tower of Ivory" and a "House of
Gold" (p.35). Stephen takes this literally and becomes confused as to how
these beautiful elements of ivory and gold could make up a human being. This
confusion is important in that it shows Stephen’s inability to grasp
abstraction. He is a young child who does not yet understand how someone can say
one thing and mean something else. This also explains his trouble in the future
with solving the riddles and puzzles presented to him by his classmates at
Clongowes. Stephen is very thoughtful and observant and looks for his own way to
explain or rationalize the things that he does not understand. In this manner he
can find those traits that he associates with the Blessed Mary in his protestant
playmate Eileen. Her hands are "long and white and thin and cold and soft.
That was ivory: a cold white thing. That was the meaning of Tower of Ivory"
(p.36). "Her fair hair had streamed out behind her like gold in the
sun" (p.43). To Stephen that is the meaning of House of Gold. He then
attributes Eileen’s ivory hands to the fact that she is a girl and generalized
these traits to all females. This produces a major conflict for Stephen when his
tutor, Dante, tells him not to play with Eileen because she is a Protestant and
Protestants don’t understand the Catholic faith and therefore will make a
mockery of it. His ideas about women being unattainable are confirmed. The
Virgin Mary is divine and there...
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