Category: A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man

Differing from the general themes that were written by other writers of his time, James Joyce experimented with the theme of “sexuality” in his works. Joyce wrote in a time where believers of social purity wanted to “suppress the explicit expression of sexuality in art, particularly in fiction” (Jones, Pg. 162), this was one of the reasons as to why Joyce’s book was very difficult to published. Joyce’s efforts to publish his work within the constraints forced on him “became an integral element in modernist avant-garde” (Jones, Pg.162) battle against censorship and his publications were a cultural rebellion. In his novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the main protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, is a teenager who continually struggles over the course of the novel between his Catholic conscience and his sexual desires. The readers observe that his sexual desires are almost always accompanied by feelings of remorse and guilt.

James Joyce’s novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man follows Stephen’s sexual development with great care. As a child, Stephen is aware that his mother smells nicer than his father does. When he is in school, he dreams of being kissed by his mother when he becomes sick and is feeling homesick. Throughout the novel, the role of women plays a significant role in Stephen’s life. Early on in the novel when he is a child, Stephen fantasizes to marry his childhood friend Eileen Vance and he often thinks about her. During Christmas dinner with his family, Stephen begins to think about Eileen’s “long white hands [that were] thin and cold and soft” (Joyce, Pg.29). It is Eileen’s soft white hands that form his romantic childlike concepts of the perfect woman. This is the first time that Stephen feels any form of attraction to that opposite sex that is not platonic but romantic. However, what he is feeling is nothing more than a sweet childhood romance.

His sexual desires continue to grow in the second chapter of the novel. He no longer feels a sweet childhood crush but a sexual longing after reading the novel The Count of Monte Christo. Stephen develops a desire for the female character Mercedes. He imagines himself growing older and sadder as Mercedes continues to slight his love for her but it is significant that he pictures himself being rejected by her. This attitude of offended loneliness is very attractive to him. Stephen is at the age where most people, male and female, fixate on a person or a character and feel certain desires for them. Mercedes plays a large role in intensifying his desires and as a way to release his pent-up desires. However, Mercedes is only a character that lives in his imagination and cannot satisfy all his desires.

Stephen’s first recognizable sexual encounter happens when he goes to a party at Harold’s Cross. While he is there, Stephen completely withdraws from the other people and seems to enjoy his solitude watching everybody, while a girl named Emma looks at him several times hoping he would come and see her. When he sees Emma, “shame rose from his smitten heart” and says that if only she “knew what his mind had subjected her or how his brutelike lust” and taken her innocence then she would not want to be near him (Joyce, Pg,97). Men are supposed to be gentlemen and not have sexually explicit thoughts in regard to women. Joyce is not shying away from showing the readers that he is not ashamed of feeling this way, that it is normal for a person to have these types of thoughts at a certain age in sexual development. Though Emma offers herself to him for a kiss, he does not do anything and this leads to him feeling frustrated and restless much like how any man would feel if they cannot perform sexually, even if it is just a kiss.

Several years later, Stephen gets excited when he believes that after a school performance, he will get to see Emma again. However, when the play is over and he discovers that Emma is nowhere to be found, he falls into despair and this leads to Stephen’s sexual desires being fully discovered. Stephen’s sexual awakening is choked off from real human relationships and diverted into romantic dreams that are fed by literature. An example is from his reading of the Count of Monte Christo. The book offered him a fictional situation of romantic and sexual love with the female lead character, Mercedes. He never acted on his desires with a real woman like a man should and this leads him to think that what he feels and desires is a sin. A consequence of this is that when Stephen meets a prostitute in the street one night, he willingly goes with her to her room and they have sex. From this moment we can see that Stephen finds and feels relief from the urges of lust but a new self-assurance. From this moment on, Stephen engages in several more “sins” such as masturbation and frequent sexual encounters with prostitutes. For years, women have been divided into categories. In Catholicism, women are divided into the category of the “Virgin/mother and fallen women/whore or Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene” (Eide, Pg. 58). For a while, his sexual dalliances with the prostitutes goes hand in hand with is romantic adoration of the Virgin Mary, his way of dealing with what he was doing and that to he believed nothing he was doing was wrong.

However, a retreat sermon convinces him that these dalliances were sinful and that he was wicked and he needed to repent for his actions, Stephen states that “he had sinned so deeply against heaven and before God that he was not worthy to be called God’s Child” (Joyce, 115). Stephen believes that unless he repents, he will go to hell. In Christianity, sinning against God was the worst offense and can result in eternal damnation. The readers later learn that Stephen failed to make the connection between the romantic sexuality in his mind and the real-life contact with a real woman. This can be said as Stephen is deeply affected by a girl who was wading in the water. Stephen says that “her image had passed into his soul forever and not word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy” (Joyce, Pg. 145). Though he feels abashed for negating the Catholic codes of morality and fears eternal damnation, he soon realizes that he has done nothing wrong and the beautiful wading girl helps Stephen move from a pious priestly life to creative dedication as an artist.

James Joyce’s novel portrays the main character, Stephen’s, sexuality commencing at a young age and how it grows to form innocent curiosity and confusion that later grows by disdainful sexual acts, guilt, and finally acceptance at the end of the novel. Sexuality is portrayed as heterosexual desire and is very conflicting for the main character. Once Stephen experiences sexual desire, he grows confused about not being able to do anything, as seen with Emma, and not being able to stop thinking about his desires for women until it consume much of his day-to-day thinking. All the while, he is contemplating becoming a Catholic Priest. He views his desires as shameful and sinful and he views it at odds with his desires for a good future, which leads to several conflicts throughout the novel. Joyce presents the readers with a conflict between the idealistic side of Stephen and the romantic side of his attraction to women. He understands that normal women, the ones he knows and speaks to, as being unapproachable and that he would be not only rejected but punished if they became aware of his sinful thoughts. Stephen’s desires are also presented as being ravenous; in addition to masturbating, he begins to visit prostitutes whenever he can to find sexual release. James Joyce’s novel A portrait of the artist as a young man attacks “the puritan’s repressiveness of the turn of the century reformist movement” (Fogarty, Pg.1) that worked under the idea of social purity. For his time, this novel was scandalous and provocative in nature, not shying away while showing the sexual desires of a man. He shows how innocent love can quickly become sexual desire as a person grows.

Work Cited:

1. Eide, Marian. “James Joyce’s Magdalene’s.” College Literature, vol. 38, no. 4, 2011, pp. 57–75. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41302888.
2. Fogarty, Anne. James Joyce Broadsheet, no. 66, 2003, pp. 3–3. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30076502.
3. Jones, Ellen Carol. James Joyce Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 1, 2006, pp. 162–166. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25571005.
4. Joyce, James, and Jeri Johnson. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Oxford University Press, 2014.

In the novel ‘The Portrait of Artist as a Young Man’ Stephen Dedalus introduces his theory of aesthetics. He gives his ideas about art and beauty. He gives his arguments about his perception of art and beauty. He defines some of terms which were not discussed before by Aristotle or by Thomas Aquinas.

But if we look at the origin of his theory, we come to know that this theory of aesthetics is influenced, to some extent, by Thomas Aquinas. Stephen has also described some of terms and ideas according to his own perceptions because he disagrees with Aquinas about some points. He takes his theory of as ‘applied Aquinas’. For many critics it is because of his too much understanding of Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle. As for some critics he has mastered the philosophy of Aquinas and Aristotle and he was able to view and observe the world with their eyes. Stephen has formulated his theory by blending thoughts and philosophies of Aquinas and of Aristotle. So, there are some traces of their philosophy in Stephen’s theory.

In the novel, the writer has described the whole details of Stephen’s life. He writes about him from his childhood to the age when he finally selects a career for himself. Evolution of an artist which is discussed in the novel shows a struggle where an artist is in confusions about fulfillment of sexual, religious and aesthetic desires. The emergence of aesthetic desires happened after the fulfillment of first two. In the beginning he is stuck in sexual and religious desires. But when he doesn’t find satisfactions after the first two then a conflict between his thoughts starts which leads him to his theory of good and beautiful and of static and kinetic effects.

The aesthetic theory presented by Stephen in ‘The Portrait of Artist as a Young Man’ is a manifesto of Joyce’s own conception of art. The three main principles of Stephen’s theory are derived from two statements of Thomas Aquinas. The first one is “That is beautiful which gives pleasure to the eye”. The second is “That is good toward which the appetite is moved”. These statements are the basis of Stephen’s theory of aesthetics. Next, I will try to know what are the principles and ideas of Stephen’s theory of aesthetics. I will also analyze them to understand his theory.

“Art is ‘stasis’ brought about by the formal rhythms of beauty”.

This is the first point of Stephen’s theory and is based on the first principle of Aquinas. Stephen further divides this point into three postulates.

1. The tragic emotions, pity and terror, arouse and arrest the mind in a condition of ‘stasis’ rather than ‘kinesis’.
2. Comedy is proper and perfect when it arouses the static emotion of joy rather than the kinetic emotion of desires or loathing.
3. The aesthetic ‘stasis’, an ideal pity, terror or joy is awakened or induced by the formal rhythm of beauty.

To understand this postulate, the Latin terms, ‘stasis’ and ‘kinesis’ should be defined. To Stephen ‘stasis’ is the satisfaction of an aesthetic sense. It only gives you an aesthetic pleasure without producing any kind of desire, or loathing. On the other hand, ‘kinesis’, i.e., kinetic produces a feeling of desire or loathing in the beholder.

Stephen defines sexual and religious desires as kinetic. It can be observed in his relationships and interactions with different kinds of women in the novel. He takes them as kinetic because these desires urge a person to get fulfillment from outside. While pity and fear, the tragic emotions, are called static by Stephen because these emotions do not urge us to possess or loath something. Instead, these emotions arrest the mind and give the beholder a kind of aesthetic pleasure.

Stephen comedy as perfect and artistic until it is static, i.e., if it does not produce desire or loathing. Rather it should produce joy which is ‘stasis’, a state of mind. To Stephen the end of all art, tragic or comic is the apprehension of beauty. The ideal ‘stasis’ is awakened only when an object possess the rhythms of beauty or proportion. This proportion is desirable in itself and does not produce the feeling of desire or loathing for something else.

“Art or beauty, divorced from good and evil is akin to truth; therefore, if truth can best be approached through intellection, beauty or art is best approached through the three stages of apprehension”.

This is second principle of Stephen’s theory and is also further divided into three parts.

1. Beauty is separated from good and evil excite the kinetic emotions of desire or loathing.
2. Beauty is related to truth because both are static.
3. Just as the first step in the direction of truth is to comprehend the act of intellection, the first step in the direction of beauty is to understand the process of aesthetic comprehension; the stages of apprehension and the qualities of beauty are akin.

This is the most debated principle of aesthetic theory. Here, we see that Joyce is presenting ‘art for art’s sake’. It upholds that beauty is akin to truth only and it has nothing to do with good or evil. Good and evil produce desire and loathing and thus are ‘kinetic’. Truth is accepted by the intellect as the most suitable outcome while beauty is seen by the imagination, as the most suitable sense-perception. As both are desirable in themselves and do not produce the desire or loathing for something else. Therefore, they should not be the subject of art, because the end of art is beauty and beauty cannot be kinetic. How is aesthetic process related to stages of apprehension of truth? To Aristotle we reach a truth by the process of intellection. We proceed from one argument to another and finally reach at the truth. Same is the case with beauty. There are three stages of apprehension of beauty discussed in the third principle.

“The three qualities of beauty which correspond to the three stages of apprehension are, in term of Aquinas, integritas, consonantia, and claritas”.

1. Integritas in wholeness – one thing.
2. Consonantia is harmony – a thing.
3. Claritas is radiance- that thing.

To explain these three terms, Stephen has taken the example of a basket. In looking at a basket, the mind first separates the basket from its surroundings and thus sees it as ‘one thing’. This is called ‘integritas’ or ‘wholeness’, that is when mind separates an object from the whole universe of space and time and consider it as ‘one thing’, distant from others.

‘Consonantia’ is due proportion or ‘harmony’. Having recognized the basket as one thing, now the mind notices its formal lines, the rhythms of its structure, and feels that it is ‘a thing’. Stephen wants to assert that mind after recognizing the basket as one thing, tries to understand its relation with its parts. Now the mind takes it as a thing it as a thing in itself, as relation of parts to whole.

‘Claritas’ is radiance or ‘wholeness’ of a thing. Here Joyce digressed from Aquinas and interpreted it according to his own secular doctrines. He says that when mind recognizes the basket as one thing and then as ‘a thing’, it suddenly perceives its true essence. The essence which actually does not lie in the object but it is the outcome of aesthetic apprehension. This essence gives the mind the feeling of aesthetic pleasure.

Stephen’s aesthetic theory, further divides arts in three parts:

• The lyrical: in the lyrical art the image is presented in immediate relation to the artist himself, i.e., personal art.
• The epic: the image is presented in immediate relation to the artist and to other, i.e., half personal.
• The dramatic. The image is presented in immediate relation to others. The artist’s personality does not reflect in the work, i.e., objective.

Now if critically evaluate the aesthetic theory of Stephen we can see that Dr. Dillion, claims that Joyce is preaching arts for ‘art’s sake’. He is separating arts from life. But a work of art cannot be created distinctly away from life. Joyce neglected the fact that there are some other factors besides good and evil which are important in the relation of art and life.

Then, Stephen has interpreted Aquinas without considering his metaphysics and thus made his theory somewhat vague. ‘Claritas’ is a metaphysical term denoting the divine image in every object while Stephen calls it the essence of beauty. This interpretation has put Stephen in a vulnerable situation.

Stephen does not realize the complexity and limitlessness of art and tries to confine it in a very narrow sphere. As A.L. Goldberg has said, “he fails to see that art is far more complex than this theory, and more complex because it necessarily engages human sympathies, rejections, feelings, thoughts and judgments”.

In the end, it is clear that Joyce secularized Aquinas to form his aesthetic theory. He took the essence but not the object of the theory and this has caused an ambiguity in its meaning. But on the whole the theory is very sound and can be presented ‘theory for theory sake’. Stephen’s way of presentation is logical and rational and it shows his conception of art and beauty.

Throughout the process of growing up, people are influenced by everything surrounding them. This phenomenon doesn’t have to be negative, but as Stephen gets older, he begins to reject any power that isn’t himself, despite being vacuumed into always having a power when he was younger. In this essay, power is the influence other characters have over Stephen’s actions. While this said power affects Stephen’s growth, it doesn’t determine an outcome, Stephen’s own choices do. His choices attempt to get rid of any power anyone else has over him as his definition of being grown is being free from everyone else’s power and individually defining oneself. Despite Stephen’s gradual ability to take control of his own life, synonymous with growing up, Stephen is never able to truly free himself from the influence of others.

The beginning of ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ presents Stephen as a young boy who is overwhelmed by the soft power that both his mother and Dante exude; this influence is the first example of Stephen’s power-vacuum. The first reaction seen between Stephen and Dante is that Dante offering Stephen a reward, a cachou, “every time he [brings] her a piece of tissue paper” (Joyce, 4). This subtle engagement between the pair results in a dynamic where Dante has the power as she is able to reward Stephen for a chore. Dante also had power over a curious Stephen in the form of knowledge; he even explicitly says “Dante knew a lot of things” after being taught one thing by her. Dante’s associated with both ‘fire’ and warmth, two things that Stephen has positive connotations with at this young age, and knowledge, a helpful tool to resolve Stephen’s curiosity, gives Dante power over Stephen despite his ignorance to it. Dante is Stephen’s original power figure, however Dante isn’t the only woman in Stephen’s childhood who has influence over his decisions. Stephen’s mother is also able to change Stephen’s reactions. For example, after being bullied by his peers, Stephen is given advice from his mother. The book says: “His mother had told him not to speak with the rough boys in the college. Nice mother! The first day in the hall of the castle when she had said goodbye she had put up her veil double to her nose to kiss him: and her nose and eyes were red. But he had pretended not to see that she was going to cry. She was a nice mother but she was not so ice when she cried” (Joyce, 5). Both by taking the advice of his mother to not speak with the boys and by pretending to be ignorant of an obvious situation – his mother’s sadness – Stephen is influenced by his mother. Although both Stephen’s mother’s and Dante’s affect on his actions are subtle, Stephen surrenders his decision making to others at his very young age.

At the beginning of his life, Stephen is surrendered to his mother; however, this dynamic quickly shifts when his fellows’ bullying power replaces his mother’s comfort. Stephen is questioned by his friends about his relationship with his mother, already indicating distrust between them. They ask: “Tell us, Dedalus, do you kiss mother before you go to bed?” (Joyce, 9). This provocative question is taken literally by a young Stephen, who first answers yes, and after being laughed at, answers no, yet he is teased by his fellows no matter his answer. Instantaneously, Stephen’s mother’s power is lost as Stephen’s begins to question his relationship with his mother and why he actually kisses her goodnight. Stephen feels “his whole body hot and confused in a moment” (Joyce, 11). The original positive warmth that Stephen’s mother provided is now replaced by the embarrassment of incorrectly answering his fellows’ question, which resulted in the ‘hotness’ of his body. Furthermore, not only are the fellows able to take the power from Stephen’s mother, but Stephen allows them to keep their power by allowing himself to be affected by their actions. Stephen remembers the instance where a fellow, Wells, “shouldered him into the square ditch the day before because he would not swap his little snuffbox for Well’s seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror of forty” (Joyce, 10). Stephen is aggressively bullied for a small play in a game which he had the right to make, and although this was obviously an awful experience for Stephen, his continually dwelling on the fact only furthers his trauma.

Stephen’s primary school years aren’t solely accompanied by his comrades’ physical and emotional bullying, but also by his teacher’s, whose bullying, being in a mentor position, hurts Stephen even more. After being hit by a teacher because Stephen’s glasses broke, he describes the feeling as “a hot burning stinging tingling blow like the loud crack of a broken stick made his trembling hand crumple together like a leaf” (Joyce, 44). This is the first time this many adjectives, specifically strong ones, that are used in a combination like this, indicating that this moment truly angered him and foreshadows a reaction. The book continues to describe the situation including a simile saying, “to think of [his hands] beaten and swollen with pain all in a moment made him feel so sorry for them as if they were not his own but someone else’s that he felt sorry for” (Joyce, 44). Rather than complaining about the pain, Stephen’s separation of his hands and his body separates the pain from himself. Being someone that wants to help others and doesn’t like seeing others in pain, Stephen has to make his hands someone else’s when he is in pain so that he can heal them. The thoughtful reflection that Stephen, a young child, is able to give after being flogged is not only impressive, but also extremely revealing to who he is as a character: a kind, good hearted person. Stephen began to grow an emotional wall because of the power that his comrades abused, and soon it seems he will also grow a physical one because of his teachers.

The power that Stephen’s comrades had over him ignited his rejection of their power when he tells the dean that he shouldn’t have been flogged, and he begins to feel equal to them rather than below. After a long a long philosophical discussion with himself about whether or not he was willing to stand up for himself, Stephen talks to the rector, the head of school. He explains his situation and in response the rector says: “Very well, […] it is a mistake and I shall speak to Father Dolan myself. Will that do now? Stephen felt the tears wetting his eyes and murmured: – O yes sir, thanks” (Joyce, 50). Stephen is finally able to stand up to the teachers, despite it being an emotional and overwhelming experience as shown by the tears, for a mistake that one of them made which caused him much pain. By doing this, Stephen regains power from them. The teachers’ lack of influence on Stephen’s decisions, related to his Catholicism or other, is confirmed when the book narrates that his masters’ “voices had now come to be hollow-sounding” (Joyce, 75). Immediately after this moment, he also regains power over the fellows. Stephen’s exit from the rector’s room is described as follows: “He could hear the cries of the fellows on the playgrounds. He broke into a run and, running quicker and quicker, ran across the cinderpath and reached the third line playground, panting. The fellows had seen him running. They closed round him in a ring, pushing one against another to hear” (Joyce, 51). The cinderpath is where Stephen was pushed down and bullied where his glasses broke, but as he came outside, he thought nothing of it. This represents the bullies losing their power, and in this transition, Stephen gains some power himself as the fellows so desperately want to hear about Stephen’s experience standing up for himself. This is the first time that Stephen consciously takes stand against the people that have power over him (in this case the teachers and students), rather than it being subconsciously replaced as with the fellows and his mother.

For a moment, Stephen is in control of himself, but his inevitable power vacuum means that something or someone needs to replace this power, and he chooses to give this power to the prostitutes. The first women with influence over Stephen are Dante and his mother; however, he is given them as parental and guardian influences: positive. This is the first time Stephen chooses the prostitutes as those who hold the power, a significant leap from the warmth of childhood and mothers to the sexual desires of adulthood. The prostitute tries to encourage Stephen’s sexual desires when he is still extremely unsure of how the night will go. After being told to give a prostitute a kiss, Stephen thinks that “his lips would not bend to kiss her”, but eventually Stephen “closed his eyes, surrendering himself to her, body and mind, conscious of nothing in the world but the dark pressure of her softly parting lips. […] Between them he felt an unknown and timid pressure, darker than the swoon of sin, softer than sound or odor” (Joyce, 91-92). The prostitute has explicit sexual power over him, taking physical control of him with the kiss, but Stephen allows her to have more than just the physical power by surrendering his mind. This allows her to get in his head, and Stephen begins to think about the religious connotations of his action. Specifically, Stephen considers the gap between the prostitute’s lips, which represent this experience as a whole, and describes it as something ‘darker than’ sin, a hyperbole, as in Catholicism sin is the darkest crime. The prostitutes have power over Stephen through his fear of sin.

After briefly experimenting with prostitutes, Stephen attends a mass where he is reminded of his relationship to Catholicism and God and gives the power back to his priest; this inspires Stephen to become a strict Catholic again. A long sermon about the horrors of hell reignites Stephen’s religious passions and gives power to the priest as Stephen spends time considering the words of the priest. The priest notices Stephen’s new devotion to God and recognizes Stephen as someone who could possibly become a priest himself. Stephen’s priest says, “To receive that call, Stephen, […] is the greatest honor that the Almighty God can bestow upon a man”, where ‘that call’ is the offering to become a priest (Joyce, 146). Stephen is being told that he can fulfil his destiny by fully believing in the priest and the priest’s power over himself. The priest continues: “No king or emperor on this earth has the power of the priest of God. No angel or archangel in heaven, no saint, not even the Blessed Virgin herself has the power of a priest of God: the power of the keys, the power to bind and to loose from sin, the power of exorcism, the power to cast out from the creatures of God the evil spirits that have power over them” (Joyce, 146). In this passionate address to Stephen, the priest uses the word ‘power’ eight times in attempt to show Stephen who he can become if he takes on the position of a priest. However, the priest focuses on the power he has over the divine rather than the power he has over Stephen, and encourages him to become someone who can also have this power. At the end of his statement the priest claims that not only does he have the power, but also “the authority to make the great God of Heaven come down upon the altar and take the form of bread and wine” (Joyce, 146). Stephen’s priest says that he has power and authority over God, a bold statement to make. Stephen subconsciously recognizes this absurdity and the corruptness of his church, which prompts “a flame […] to flutter again on Stephen’s cheek as he heard in this proud address an echo of his own proud musings” (Joyce, 146). Pride is a sin, and by recognizing that the priest is acting on sin and encouraging his own sin in this moment, Stephen begins to acknowledge the negatives of the power the priest has over him.

The priest’s power comes to an end when Stephen has a small moment of concern, suggesting that if such a little moment can have such a big impact on Stephen, the priest didn’t deserve to have power of him in the first place. When walking across a bridge, Stephen notices that “a squad of Christian brothers was on its way back from the Bull and had begun to pass, two by two, across the bridge” (Joyce, 153). At this moment this organized ‘squad’ represents Stephen’s religiousness or his future in the church. He continues: “Soon the whole bridge was trembling and resounding. The uncouth faces passed him two by two, stained yellow or red or livid by the sea, and as he strove to look at them with ease and indifference, a faint stain of personal shame and commiseration rose to his own face. Angry with himself he tried to hide his face from their eyes by gazing down sideways into the shallow swirling water under the bridge” (Joyce, 153). A beginning that suggests the negatives of religion towards Stephen with unsure vocabulary such as ‘trembling’ is continued with the stain of colors. ‘Livid’ is both the color of bruises and also an adjective meaning angry, which both have negative connotations. Stephen perceiving the boys as angry suggests, if put in the same position, he would also be angry, and he recognizes there is no way to hide that. Furthermore, both the connection with bruises from the color ‘livid’ and the synonymous describes reaction of ‘shame’ to both this moment and after being beating suggest Stephen recognizes his teachers and the priests as people with similar power over him which needs to be gotten rid of.

Void of power, Stephen turns to his relationship with Emma for fulfillment, but ultimately realizes poetry is more important to him than any girl. Throughout Joyce’s novel, few moments of Stephen’s art are displayed, until his villanelle about Emma. In it, Stephen writes: “Your eyes have set man’s heart ablaze” (Joyce, 207). It is clear Stephan cares about Emma, he goes so far as to write a poem about her, but the subtle connection to heat suggests she has the negative connotations fire has throughout the book. Stephen comes to this conclusion when he realizes that Emma is preventing him from becoming his true self, which is a poet. After misquoting Thomas Nash, an English poet, by replacing the word ‘brightness’ with ‘darkness’, Stephen realizes that Emma is the reason for his carelessness and says, “Well then, let her go and be damned to her” (Joyce, 217). This conscious removal of Emma herself and her power from his life because of her effect on his poetry and artistry begins to reveal Stephen’s realization that he wants to be alone. His final cut-off from Emma occurs in his journal, where he writes: “[Emma] asked me, was I writing poems? About whom? I asked her. This confused her more and I felt sorry and mean. Turned off that valve at once and opened the spiritual-heroic refrigerating apparatus, invented and patented in all countries by Dante Alighieri” (Joyce, 234). Stephen responds to Emma’s question in a closed off and negative way, but no complacently: he fully recognizes his rudeness. Despite this, he still discards any power Emma could have left, closing his ‘valve’ as if he has turned it to a robot with on and off switches. Moreover, throughout the transition of power from person to person, Stephen has feelings of ‘shame’ and heat, however his final conclusion with anyone of power comes with the opening of something cold: a ‘refrigerating apparatus’ made by a poet. This is Stephen’s attempted final goodbye to the hotness of everyone’s power over him other than himself.