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Women in a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
(Search, Escape and Refuge)
Vikki M. Gaikwad
Research Student,
Dept. of English, SPPU, Pune.
Abstract:
Present paper focuses on the role of women in the semi-autobiographical novel, A Portrait of Artist as a
Young Man (1916) by James Joyce. Unlike cliché mode of handling with such issues, the argument in the paper tries
to explain how women in the novel help Stephen in his quest, escape and refuge. Stephen is conflicted about his own
views of women and suffers great guilt. As the novel progresses, the structure of the relationship between Stephen,
women and art becomes increasingly clear. The emphasis is on other hand is to see other side of the coin which
makes one think A Portrait as a homoerotic work of fiction (it may stem from a slight anachronism) which helps one
to see how women becomes instrumental in providing him refuge from the ‘self’ which he escapes earlier.

Keywords: Art- Aesthetic, Homoeroticism, the proximate, Other Victorian.

Like T.S. Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock,” James Joyce’s A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man (1916), though a
work of youth, seems prematurely aged.
Joyce treats his fictional version of his
younger self with a mixture of irony and
sympathy. The novel tells the story of
Stephen Dedalus, a young Irishman, from
earliest childhood until his decision to leave
Ireland for Paris and become a writer.
Before achieving his destiny as an artist,
however, the young man experiences
various epiphanies, mostly misleading ones.
The title itself suggests that Joyce’s focus
throughout will be those aspects of the
young man’s life that are key to his artistic
development, and it allows one to consider
each event in Stephen’s life-from the
opening story of the moocow to his
experience with religion and the university -
as a significant contribution to his growth as
an artist.
In a portrait of the artist Stephen is
conflicted about his own views of women
and suffers great guilt. As the novel
progresses, the structure of the relationship
between Stephen, women and art becomes
increasingly clear. He realizes that to fulfill
his destiny as an artist, he must embrace life
and the experiences of which it consists, for
it is from experience that he builds his
creation. In light of revelation, Stephen’s life
becomes a process of accumulating
experiences, as well as a struggle to break
free those institutions that would prevent
him from doing so. For Stephen, inspiration
requires experience, and it is through
women that he gains the latter and thus
receives the former.
Stephen's relationship with the opposite sex
begins to develop early in his life. Within
the first few pages of the novel lay hints of
the different roles women will play in his
story. Dante becomes the first to give
Stephen some experience of the world
outside himself when she teaches him about
geographical features in other countries and
on the moon. This physical understanding of
the exterior world may be the impetus for
Stephen's subsequent construction of a
hierarchical list that defines his place within
the universe.
Both Dante and Stephen's own mother
associate themselves with punishment when
they assert that he "will apologise" or "the
eagles will come and pull out his eyes"1 .
This incident results in Stephen's
composition of a poem based on "apologise"
and "eyes," one of his first artistic
endeavors. Dante and Mrs. Dedalus, having
1
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Youngman
(Wordsworth Editions, 1992),p.4

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planted these words in Stephen's mind, are
the first females to inspire him to create.
The recognition of women as sexual beings
manifests itself again, when after reading
The Count of Monte Christo, Stephen begins
to have sexually-driven fantasies about its
female protagonist, Mercedes. Though she
exists only in fiction, Mercedes' role in
Stephen's development and accumulation of
experience is no less important. She
represents a new step in his relationship with
women, in that her physical presence is not
required to inspire Stephen's imagination.
Her image alone has a profound effect on
him: "as he brooded upon her image, a
strange unrest crept into his blood". In this
case, Mercedes' image stirs sexual feelings
in Stephen, but eventually the female image
comes to have a deeper significance for him,
as does the sexual act to which it is tied.
Though his fantasies are rife with sexual
content, Stephen finds himself unable to
consummate -- in even the mildest form --
the scenes he imagines. While alone on a
tram with a girl his own age, he feels
compelled to kiss her, but fails to do so.
Angry with himself, he attempts to create
with poetry what he was unable to achieve
in real life. This time Stephen's imagination
is stirred not by a sexual image, but by a
sexual experience, however frustrated it may
be. He makes a conscious decision to write
about the experience, and "by dint of
brooding on the incident" he successfully
creates a love poem.
Even before this incident, Stephen seems to
understand that women hold the power to
transform him; he prophetically imagines
that upon a successful consummation of the
sexual act, "weakness and timidity and
inexperience would fall from him". Women,
in Stephen's mind, are the channel through
which strength, boldness, and -- perhaps
most importantly -- experience can be
obtained. As the incident on the tram
suggests, Stephen cannot create art without
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the inspiration of a real-life incident.
Clearly, he would prefer that his experiences
have fruitful, rather than frustrating,
outcomes; however, he is unable to actively
obtain such a goal. In a sense, he seems
emasculate, lacking both the strength and
boldness to initiate a sexual encounter.
Eventually, the frustration becomes too
much for him, and he seeks the service of a
sex-worker. Even after having taken this
initial step, however, Stephen remains
passive: it is he who wishes "to be held
firmly in her arms" and who ultimately
"surrender[s] himself to her2" . Not until she
embraces him does he feel "strong and
fearless and sure of himself3". At last,
through the prostitute's active contribution,
Stephen receives the sexual experience he so
desires which later plays an important role
in his self-finding task.
Having obtained a newfound boldness
(which would help him to explore his artistic
zeal), Stephen actively engages in sin of
every kind. Although committing each of
the seven deadly sins ensures Stephen of
eternal damnation, he seems more concerned
with experiencing life to its fullest. In the
midst of his departure from Catholic
doctrine, however, he finds himself drawn to
the paragon of purity, the Virgin Mary. He
feels close to "the refuge of sinners"4 --
despite the fact that he commits sin upon sin
-- and associates her with sex when, "after
the frenzy of his body's lust had spent
itself5" his thoughts turn to "her whose
beauty is not like earthly beauty6" Once
again, the image of a woman delights
Stephen and inspires his imagination; but
when he decides to confess his sins and seek
the shelter of the Virgin, he temporarily
2
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Youngman
(Wordsworth Editions, 1992),p.77
3
Ibid
4
Ibid,p.79
5
Ibid p.80
6
Ibid
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places the moral purity she represents above
his own initial fascination with her physical
beauty.
After a brief period of intense devoutness,
Stephen again turns his back to the church
with the certainty that he does not belong
among the pious. As he literally walks away,
he "turn[s] his eyes coldly for an instant
towards the faded blue shrine of the Blessed
Virgin". Though he abandons the rigidly
religious, moral aspect of the Virgin, he still
finds inspiration in the sexual element of her
image. This becomes apparent during his
encounter with a young woman on the beach
shortly after his decision to leave the church.
The girl's beauty instantly strikes Stephen,
and he experiences something akin to a
religious revelation. The image of the Virgin
subtly appears in her "slate blue skirts7" and
"mortal beauty8" and blatantly religious
language such as "Heavenly God," "holy,"
and "angel" fills the passage. Clearly,
Stephen has not completely discarded
religion, but has instead incorporated it into
a concept more appropriate to his
development as an artist. The young woman
becomes "an envoy from the fair courts of
life9", who delivers inspiration when "her
image [passes] into his soul forever10".
Though Stephen receives artistic inspiration
throughout the novel, nowhere does the
narrative so blatantly describe the role of
women in the delivery of it. They are the
emissaries through which life provides him
with experience, allowing him "to live, to
err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of
life"11. They deliver the raw experience he
transforms and refines into art.
The key for understanding the relationship
between women, sex, experience, and
creation lies in Stephen's association of
7
Ibid p.132
8
Ibid
9
Ibid
10
Ibid
11
Ibid
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himself with his mythological namesake,
Daedalus. By establishing a link between
himself and the ancient inventor, he makes
apparent the parallel elements of their two
stories -- punishment, falling, women -- and
their relationship to his own artistic creation.
Pasiphae, wife of King Minos, provides
Daedalus with the impetus to create when
she asks him to construct a cow-shaped shell
in which she can hide in order to have sex
with a bull. Thus, women and sex provide
the artist with his inspiration, and are tied to
the events that follow i.e. Daedalus receives
punishment, in the form of the Labyrinth,
for his creation; and the escape from this
punishment ultimately leads to the famous
fall of Icarus, who flies too high and melts
the wax of his artificial wings12.
My emphasis is on other hand is to see other
side of the coin which makes us think
portrait as a homoerotic work of fiction,
when one considers Joyce’s own educational
career at an elite all-male boarding school,
Clongowes Wood College, it becomes
apparent that he has constructed along the
lines of what Jonathan Dollimore (in his
book Sexual Dissidence) has called, “the
proximate13”. Being socially adjacent to the
self, the proximate is that which can be most
effectively dissociated from the self:
“Because it is right here, I can see or grasp it
and so it cannot be right here; he near-me
can only be not-me”. In modern world of
male entitlement, the proximate-ness of
homo- and heterosexuality has taken on a
particularly explosive form to which Eve
Kosofsky Sedgwick has given the name
“homosexual panic”. Sedgwick summarizes
patriarchy as a “set of relations between men
which have a material base and which,
though hierarchical, establish or create
interdependence and solidarity among men
12
Baldwin James, Old Greek Stories ( EBUP Version,
Presented by Trisit App)chap.14.
13
Dollimore Jonathan, Sexual Dissidence (OUP,2011)
p.249.
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that able them to dominate women14”.
Patriarchal institutions like the elite male
boarding school, serve to promote what he
calls male homo-social desires. These
institutions though made to promote
morality and order actually help to
legitimize or rather avail a ‘displacement’
for sexual desires. The description of
‘Smugging’ episode in portrait, and
characters like Simon Moonan & Tusker
Boyle (also known as Lady Boyle) is a good
example of such discourse.
The role of women is instrumental in this
notion also. Joyce’s curious use of women
character and gender inversion in the novel
offer an interesting theory, which in its
conclusion defines Stephen as a repressed
homosexual, Richard Ellmann (writer of
Joyce’s Biography) comments on the state
of Ireland, saying, “ a curious aspect of Irish
life is that relationships between men seem
more vital there than the relationships
between men and women. It is not easy to
know whether this trait is due to a long
misogynistic bias in Irish Catholicism..The
trait carries over into the work of Joyce, in
his writing; there is a succession of
important friendship between men, which
receive more of his attention than love
affairs15”. Thinking in this manner, one
would find that the image of women is used
as the end of an aesthetic ideal in the novel
and not an object of sexual desire. Because
the sexual orientation of the protagonist
(though not explicitly) is more towards
either his male companions or rather
confused.
The evidences of the above mentioned
thought can be found in the manner of
narration in which he describes Mr.Gleeson,
“Mr Gleeson had round shiny cuffs and
clean white wrists and fattish white hands
and the nails of them were long and
14
Sedgwick Eve Kosofsky,The Epistemology of the
Closet (California University Press,1990)p.118-212
15
Ellmann Richard, James Joyce (OUP,1959)p.56.
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pointed….he (Stephen) felt a feeling of
queer quiet pleasure inside him to think of
white fattish hands, clean and strong and
gentle16” ,his memory of Corrigon having
bath, “he had skin the colour as
tufcoloured….when he walked along the
side his feet slapped loudly…his thighs
shook a little” and his relation with Cranely
who calls him “an excitable man” and with
whom Stephen had a walk in last section of
the novel, Cranely gripping his arm. His
father calls him ‘lazy bitch’(not dog),
indicating a confusion about gender and
anger of his father as an orthodox man.
When Stephen mocks his father’s comment
his mother says, ‘Ah! It’s scandalous shame
for you..’ as if she has got a little hint of his
confused sexuality.
The thing that provokes one to think in this
way is not only the several occasions where
we see protagonist’s orientation towards
same-sex but the attention and keenness
with which he describes them (which we
don’t find in case of women characters in
the novel). Stephen (in chap 5) confesses, ‘I
can…use (ing) for my defense the only arms
I allow myself to use- silence, exile,
cunning17’, that the only arm he uses in his
defense is silence which denotes the
repression of his genuine feelings. He
chooses to keep silent and flee from his
reality. Also the use of words like queer
(used more), suck, cock keeps a room for
homoerotic glimpses novel for these words
have connotations in queer theory18.
Stephen’s attraction towards women thus,
throughout the novel, exists only as an
experiment for creating an aesthetic ideal.
16
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a
Youngman (Wordsworth Editions, 1992),p.33
17
James Joyce, p.191, A Portrait of the Artist as a
Youngman, wordsworth classics.
18
Such interpretation is a kind of anachronism
though.
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His mother provides him a source of
physical pleasure at the very beginning
(smell & kiss), through Mercedes he learns
how to raise women to the status of art, then
Emma becomes a reason to create his first
praise of the female form and as an
experiment in making women the crux for
his aesthetic theory. He gives into sex-
worker’s advancement out of desire to sin
and a desire to relive maternal comfort,
while hoping to get insight into the life of
women and experience her sexually for
aesthetic end; it can also be thought as an
endeavour to match up the social norm or to
become an ‘Other Victorian’, which though
does not carry morality, is a part of social
normativity19, rather being
blasphemous.Stephen seeks refuge in
women and comfort from confused sexual
identity, not an outlet for sexual frustration.
The gender inversions present in the novel
suggests Stephen’s repressed homosexuality.
We find him travelling towards
‘authenticity20’ as an artist but living in
‘bad-faith’ as a human being.

19
Foucault Mitchel,Vol1, History of Sexuality,
(Pantheon Books,1978.)p.4
20
Heidegge Martin, Being and Time (Blackwell
Publications,2001)

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Works Cited
Abram, M .H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. New Delhi: Wads-Worth , Cengage Learning India
pvt.ltd, 2009.
Baldwin, James. Old Greek Stories. Trisit Books (Mobile Application), n.d.
Barry, Peter. Beginnig Theory : An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theoy. 3rd Edition.
New Delhi: Viva Books Private Limited, 2012.
Dollimore, Jonathan. Sexual Dissidence. OUP, 2011.
Ellemann, Rechard. James Joyce. OUP, 1959.
Foucault, Mitchel. History of Sexuality. Vol. 1st. Pantheon Books, 1978.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson. Blackwell
Publications, 2001.
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. London: Worworth Editions, 1992.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. University of Clifornia Press, 1990.
Seldan, Roman. A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Theory. Pearson Education pvt.ltd., 2005.

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