A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man: Critical Points Of View

Werner argues that Joyce’s own ‘writing is an extension of his particular experience as a man within a patriarchal hegemony’ (Wegner, 114). Joyce conveys this reality by recounting these semi-autobiographical experiences as a young man grappling with achieving growth, self actualization, finding truth and finding his gender identity in the process. Wegner argues that rather than Stephen’s gender being portrayed as the male hero, Joyce instead offers a look at Stephen as a young man attempting to diverge from socially imposed gender roles and norms (Wegner, 115). Joyce presents Stephen’s fluid sense of gender identity through his spiritual meditations. The narrator frequently refers to Stephen’s soul with female gendered pronouns. This is evident through chapter four and five as well as the hypersexualized language Joyce uses to describe his soul, ‘an inaudible voice seems to caress the soul, telling her names and glories, bidding her arise as for espousal and come away….’ (Joyce, 117). By the narration defining Stephen’s soul as female it is giving way to the Biblical tradition of defining the soul as female and it could be argued by doing this also presenting the latent female anatomy of Stephen’s soul. ‘Through The narrations labeling of Stephen’s soul as female in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce creates uncertainty as to whether or not Stephen is conscious of his soul’s female gendering’ (Wegner, 116). Therefore, one could reject the idea of Stephen as the allusion of the Daedalus myth and a example of the hegemonic male instead through the biblical tradition of labeling a soul as female, one could argue that the character of Stephen expresses a fluid gender identity within James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

In ‘The Artist and Gendered Discourse: Joyce and Muted Female Culture’, Bonnie Kime Scott comments on Joyce’s manipulation of gender when she says ‘A troubling possibility is that Joyce’s writing of women still serves a male author’s ego, proving he can move into other forms’ (Kime Scott, 422). While this could be true, Joyce uses females within A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to communicate not only gender but social commentary through the lens of Irish and Celtic folklore. In the novel, Joyce integrates the image and idea of the devouring female, which enforces the ancient Irish tradition of portraying females as destructive forces. Joyce depicts several female characters in his novels this way by making them sexually consuming, dominating and overall destructive to the male characters. The portrayal of his female characters, though not all of Joyce’s female characters, in the light of the traits of devouring females suggest a negative depiction of women by Joyce. His depictions of women often show they have power but unlike their male counterparts, it is destructive power. The Devouring Female is a common figure in Celtic and Irish folklore and mythology, Patrick Keane suggests the three dominant Celtic versions of the devouring female appear in the ‘Leanhaun Shee, the Morrigu and Sheela-na-gig’ (Keane, x). They are the muse, goddess of war and mother. Keane describes them as ‘a Triple Goddess at once creative and destructive, benevolent and malign, nurturing and devouring’ (Keane, 7). They are considered to be both womb and tomb, creator and destroyer. The three form together to create the Terrible Mother. The three aspects of the Terrible Mother also pose a social commentary especially for Ireland as they combine together to become Ireland personified within the sovereignty. The devouring female was reflected in ancient Irish folklore and literary characters and it is said that when such a female character appears, they are modeled after one of the three versions of the terrible mother.