Sex and Sexuality in James Joyce's “A Portrait of the Artist as 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 avantgarde” (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.