In James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man we follow Stephen Dedalus through the experiences in his life that transform him into an artist by the end. Most prominent among these experiences are the women he encounters and how his views of women in general evolve over time. It starts with his first attempts at poetry inspired by his mother and the governess of the Dedalus children Dante. Then evolves through his infatuation with Emma and later a girl he sees standing in the waves at a beach. Throughout A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen's evolving views of women serve as a catalyst that transforms him from a simple-minded, idealistic child, into the artist he later becomes.
Stephen's first attempt at poetry acted as a coping mechanism over his fear of punishment. He had blurted out over dinner that he was going to marry his neighbor Eileen once grown, who was a protestant. His Catholic family disapproved but it was his mother and Dante who had the strongest reaction, saying that eagles would pull out his eyes if he didn't apologize. While Stephen hid under the table he made up a simple rhyme, “Pull out his eyes,/ Apologize,/ Apologize,/ Pull out his eyes,// Apologize,/ Pull out his eyes,/ Pull out his eyes,/ Apologize.” (2) This play on words is as simple as his views on women at this stage in his life. His experiences so far have been limited to his mother, the governess (or mentor), and “the girl next door”, different story archetypes that appear often in fairy tales that serve primarily as a means to motivate the hero forward, either as a starting push into the world or an end prize. In seeking the girl the man becomes the hero of his story. These ideas form the basis of what will become h...
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At every major turning point in Stephen's life a woman is there, either physically or symbolically, to initiate him into the new stage of life. These changes also bring about a new evolution in how he views the women around him. From the bearers of discipline found in Dante and his mother, to the sexual release he finds in the prostitutes, the purity he seeks in Emma and the Virgin Mary, to reach his ultimate transformation thanks to the woman on the beach. His experience with women drive his character forward and transform him into the artist he was meant to be, helping him grow from boy to man. It was the women in his life that started him on the path to becoming an artist and his views and experiences that shaped him into the artist seen at the end. Indeed if it hadn't been for the women he encountered, Stephen never would have become an artist at all.
The simplicity, linearity and one dimensionality of fairytales have led to the belief in there allegorical nature, a conviction that fairytales mean something quite different from what stands in the text. As with most literary works there is deeper meaning in fairytales than just meets the eye. Little Red, the Wolf, and Grandmother are all one-dimensional characters. The illustrations are simple and sweet. No one character has more emphasis than the other and the focus is on the highly symbolic language, images.
The influential roles of women in the story also have important effects on the whole poem. It is them that press the senses of love, family care, devotion, and other ethical attitudes on the progression of the story. In this poem the Poet has created a sort of “catalogue of women” in which he accurately creates and disting...
By knowing Stephen’s thoughts, readers also know definitively that in some ways, Stephen feels like a man and wishes she was one, such as when she asks her father if he thinks she could become a man if she prays hard enough (19). Thus, some readers will consider the possibility that Stephen is in some ways more than a cisgender (a person who identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth, or whose sex and gender match) lesbian woman; in today’s terminology she might be transgender, non-binary (not a part of the gender binary of male or female), or even genderfluid (going back and forth between male and female or other genders). Stephen subverts of gender norms, as in some ways she also subverts what many think of as a lesbian character. Her feelings and society’s norms at the time lead her to think that because she is attracted to women, perhaps she was meant to be a man (because attraction to women is an attribute innate to men). For readers today almost ninety years later, seeing a character like Stephen who shares so many of the same feelings, reservations, worries, and even self-doubt about love and identity reminds us that people of the
Music and other art forms often go hand in hand. Creativity is not just a one-note deal or rather it is not confined to a singular aspect or form. Oftentimes it is interlaced into many forms, such as, music, writing, artwork, fashion and much more. Like a tree, creativity grows and extends out into infinite directions rooting itself in society. One such artist is Brandon Boyd. During the day he is a contemporary artist and by night he is a singer-songwriter for an internationally recognized rock band, Incubus. Some of their songs include; “Pardon Me” form the album entitled, When Incubus Attacks Vol. 1, and “Drive, “Dig,” and “Oil and Water,” three of my favorites, from the album entitled, Monuments and Melodies and “Sad Sick Little World” from the album entitled, A Crow Left of the Murder. In a 2009 interview with CNN, Brandon said it best, when asked, “So what does art fulfill in you that you don’t get out of music?”
The story can be analyzed using feminist criticism perspective. Feminist criticism is “" the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women"” (Brizee & Tompkins). When reading a text one can find how women were treated in contemporary times. It can be expressed in many areas listed by Brizee & Tompkins. Moreover, Delahoyde also gave more details on the subject when he said “Feminist criticism concern itself with stereotypical representations of genders. It also may trace the history of relatively unknown or undervalued women writers, potentially earning them their rightful place within the literary canon, and helps create a climate in which women's creativity may be fully realized and appreciate.” Women had been undervalued and taken for granted. Many things they do are not as...
I am a freckled, Caucasian, red-haired, Lutheran and Catholic mix, small town, and middle-class girl. My mother’s side shows their traditional Catholicism by attending church every Sunday in classy, elegant attire. My father’s side is loud, supportive, and flamboyant. I was raised on old-fashioned family values and the idea of money being a tool to help achieve goals.” My father’s family was generally lower class his whole life, and now he is always working very hard to give my sister and me endless opportunities. My mother’s side was middle class with conventional values and lifestyle attributes. My parents, Tony, a hard working mechanic, and Tanya, a Bennie accountant, own a greasy car repair shop just outside of town, and the only employees are family and friends. I am proud of my Norwegian, Scottish, German, and non-Irish heritage. Even though my hair is an “Irish” red, I am not the slightest bit Irish. In fact, red heads are considered unlucky in Irish culture. This typecast is one that I have had to overcome since elementary school. Although there are no negative implications attached when people assume I am Irish, it is bothersome to have to correct someone on something he or she knows nothing about. I went to a public, non-diverse, local school in Lakeville, Minnesota. My high school education was the most traditional time in my schooling because of fine arts budget cuts. These cuts proved to be the strongest “push” for me to pursue a career in the fine arts.
In order to understand the effects that ideas of femininity have on literary texts, we must first acknowledge what the term means. Clearly both terms derive from the original sex of the being, whether male or female, and can be similarly tied in with notions of gender, either masculine or feminine, which are said to be constructs, or labels, created by society. However `masculinity' and `femininity' become, on some levels, dislodged from the idea of the biological makeup and gender constructs, and instead tend to be described in terms of discourse. It is not just the sex and gender of a being that determines their actions, but instead their thoughts and opinions.
By the end of the novel, we can clearly see Stephen as the artist that he truly is. His profound knowledge and enthusiasm for art are explicitly displayed. He is a shadow of the young man he used to be. His transformation from the sensitive child to the independent, passionate, artistic man whom he is now is profound. He tried to be the man he was raised to be, but ultimately, it is not in his nature. This disconcerting journey is not one he wants to continue. What was instilled in him from a young age has brought him the most conflict in his life until he chooses his own destiny. He is no longer afraid to be alone, to follow his passion and to free himself of all persecutions. Just as Daedalus made a pair of wings to escape his prison, so does he; exactly as he was born to do.
The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce is widely recognized by New Critics as one of the greatest novels of its age for its aesthetic artistry. In the Portrait, a powerful autobiographical novel of bildungsroman, commonly known as a coming-of-age story, that follows the life of Irish protagonist Stephen Dedalus, Joyce portraits his momentous transition to adulthood as a passage of psychological struggle towards his ultimate philosophical awakening and his spiritual rebirth as an artist. Most visibly in Chapter Four of the novel, Stephen Dedalus, after the denial of his own priesthood, goes on to seek his artistic personality through his secluded journey amongst a myriad of natural elements. Dramatizing the Stephen’s progression towards his artistic revelation, Joyce deployed numerous image patterns that together insinuate the spiritual transformation of Stephen Dedalus into an “impalpable imperishable being” out of the earthly body of which he is composed of (Joyce 108). Specifically, Stephen’s intellectual transfiguration is largely connected with the symbolic connotations of the clouds depicted throughout his journey, which alludes to his transcending soul, wafting across the celestial heaven yet hovering intimately close to the earth that he belongs.
...dom and power of his soul, as the great artificer whose name he bore, a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable". (Joyce, 433) Stephen is now fully able to create from within himself, without being dependent on others to feel whole. This is accentuated by Joyce’s description of the beach scene— "He was alone. He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life". (Joyce, 433) Stephen the artist is alone and needs to be alone, not to search in vein for companionship that, even if attained, could only drag him from his newfound freedom. This realization of self-fulfillment and self-control is the single defining point in Stephen’s education; it is the brushstroke that completes the "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man."
Throughout the story A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce we see Stephen's struggle with Catholicism, sin and his destiny. In Stephen's life, which almost mirrors Joyce's, Catholicism is a big part but it fades and in it's place comes art. The title alone tells us that he is an artist not that he is Catholic. It is Joyce's priority to tell us about himself as an artist and how he became to be one, by rejecting Catholicism.
An important similarity between them is their isolation. Joyce believed that the separation from society is important for an artist in order to see society clearly. Common people are easily swayed by authority figures, as Dante and other Irish Catholics are against Parnell by the church's condemnation, or by other trendy movements such as the peace testimonial, all of which are rejected by Stephen in the end. When Stephen in his discourse on beauty describes the basket, he says "your mind first of all separates the basket from the rest of the visible universe which is not the basket. The first phase of apprehension is a bounding line drawn about the object to be apprehended" (212). Thus, by extension, if an artist is to apprehend the society, a line must be bound around society separating the artist from it in order to view it; it is difficult in a maze of hedges to comprehend the pattern, but when viewed from above the paths in and out become clear. The artist must stand outside the changeable mindset of the average human being in orde...
As Stephen grows, he slowly but inexorably distances himself from religion. His life becomes one concerned with pleasing his friends and family. However, as he matures he begins to feel lost and hopeless, stating, "He saw clearly too his own futile isolation. He had not gone one step nearer the lives he had sought to approach nor bridged the restless shame and rancor that divided him from mother and brother and sister." It is this very sense of isolation and loneliness that leads to Stephen's encounter with the prostitute, where, "He wanted to sin with another of his kind, to force another being to sin with him and to exult with her in sin.
In Joyce’s first chapter, crucial characteristics of Stephen’s individuality are established. Stephen’s first memory as a child begins with storytelling. “Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named tuckoo…” (Portrait, 7). From the start, Stephen’s lines are riddled with poetic sound and rhythm. Joyce demonstrates Stephen’s control over words with the baby’s first stream of consciousness.
... men in the story are portrayed, exhibits the degradation of the value of the self-expression of a woman.