Role of Religion and Politics in the Growth of Stephen Dedalus as an Artist
Introduction
Before getting started with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce wrote and rewrote his autobiographical novel, Stephen Hero in several phases between 1903 and 1914. It was Stephen Hero which would eventually be condensed into five chapters and named ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’. Beginning with Stephen Hero as early as 1903, he broke off with it and focused his attention on writing Dubliners at the time and Stephen Hero remained disintegrated till 1914 when Joyce finally completed and published it. It is phenomenal how he managed to condense a huge thousand pages manuscript into a multilayered, two hundred-page novel. While in Stephen Hero some characters remain at the forefront, like his family, we see that in Portrait these characters take a back seat and remain in the shadow of Stephen and his growth into an artist. Just those critical elements and characters relating to Stephen Dedalus’ development remain and thus the novel is more about showing Stephen’s growth with respect to them. This book is a woven tapestry of elements that play throughout, written in a language with multilayered meanings where the protagonist in search of his identity breaks from nationalism, language as well as a religion that seemed to have ruled over his life. To pave the way for the discovery of his identity as an individual in a world which seems to fling him back into the pit of the age of traditions and beliefs, he appears to revolt and steps beyond the so-called Grand Narrative.
The portrait is considered to be a bildungsroman with the protagonist’s growth from childhood to youth and culminating in the protagonist discovering his identity. More specifically it is a Kunstlerroman, which focuses on the spiritual and emotional growth of an artist. It traces the development of Stephen from his childhood perception of the world to the moment when he decides to leave Ireland as an adult with a completely changed consciousness of it and is aware of his calling as an artist. The evolution of language presented by Joyce is exceptionally subtle and while reading we observe how he makes Stephen explore the grey areas of life; like when we are given a glimpse of his younger mind there’s either something that’s completely right or completely wrong. It is in his Jesuit school where he is pushed into a cesspool and eventually starts to see the bigger instances- when the bigger kid pushes the little one, it is actually the big institutions pushing the little ones, and when he gets bullied by the bigger kids he realizes that no matter what happens in life, one is going to get ridiculed anyway and therefore realizes the fact that there are grey areas which one needs to accept. Like Daedalus of the Greek myth, Stephen must grow wings so that he may fly through life’s trials and tribulations and we do see him maturing into an extraordinary adult who knows his place in the world and therefore decides to rise above tumultuous Ireland in a revolt against the society which is a struggle against his past and heritage.
Role of Religion and Politics in the Growth of Stephen Dedalus
“When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, and religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.”
Like Nietzsche, Joyce also calls for the ‘death of God’ and the birth of Stephen as an artist in Portrait. Religion and nationality play a pivotal role in Stephen’s life from the very beginning and are intertwined with religion being at the center and pervading all spheres of his life- at home, in school, and even in Irish politics. Discovering himself in the realm of religion after getting prompted in a life of sin and guilt, Stephen gradually begins to realize that the life of rigorous devotion and prayer is actually superficial and lacks substance, thereby finally rejecting the religious vocation. Stephen’s rejection of the Catholic Church mirrors Joyce’s own dismissal of any kind of involvement with Irish politics and religious issues. Growing up in a Catholic society, Stephen is introduced to the word ‘morality’ at a very young age with the Church being the center of all religious and political affairs, and therefore we observe Stephen becoming aware of the situation between the Church of Ireland and the secular front. Stephen faces both nationalism as well as religion from the very beginning –Catholic Church was a major influence in Ireland during the nineteenth century not only in terms of spiritual guidance but also because of its impact on the cultural and political life of the country.
The Catholic Church was itself a focus of Irish nationalist resistance against English colonialism but was itself divided. Some of them believed Irish identity to be inseparable from Catholicism while others accused the Church of betraying Irish nationalism. This divide is clearly visible at the Christmas dinner between Dante Riordan and Mr. Casey and Stephen’s father with Dante supporting the Catholic Church and the other two opposing it. This scene as we notice has a major impact upon young Stephen who is sitting there among adults listening to various opinions about politics and religion. On one hand, we have Dante defending the Church and its involvement in political affairs of the country, arguing, ‘A priest would not be a priest if he did not tell his flock what is right and what is wrong’; that it was a question of ‘public morality’ and figures such as Parnell who lack this morality are not fit to rule a country.
On the other hand, people like Mr. Casey and Mr. Dedalus argue that Catholic Church should not interfere with politics and that it was responsible for betraying Irish nationalism which is how it should be ideally, to separate religion from politics but Dante remains adamant and comes off as a rigid fundamentalist when in a fit of rage she exclaims ‘God and morality and religion comes first … God and religion before everything…God and religion before the world!’ Disagreeing with her, Mr. Casey finally snaps that if he had to choose between God and his country’s independence, then: ‘No God for Ireland…we have had too much God in Ireland. Away with God!’ All this is taking place with young Stephen sitting right there and we observe how his mind comprehends this argument: he seems to be in awe of how Mr. Casey puts forth his arguments and simultaneously thinks about how Dante had prohibited him to engage with Eileen because she was a protestant. Discussions like these no doubt retained in his young man and played a significant role in shaping his views towards religion. Therefore, the image that Stephen had of his home and of its security which helped him cope with his tough days at Conglowes is shattered by this family argument. What should have been a peaceful and happy time of his childhood becomes for him a violent affair leaving him ‘terror-stricken’ and eventually uncertain about religion and politics. But it does at the same time help him gain an insight into the whole Irish politics and Parnell at a very young age which definitely plays a massive role in his perception of the world.
On the other hand, as he matures and obtains a clearer understanding of Parnell's fate, and others like him, who dedicated their lives to their cause only to be betrayed by the complicity of the Catholic clergy, Stephen, who was himself named after a martyr, begins to identify with Parnell to some degree. Eventually becoming aware of Parnell’s fate, Stephen refuses to succumb to the narrow-mindedness of the Irish people and dissociates himself from Ireland thereby realizing that his fate as an artist lay outside. Feeling distant from his father day by day, Stephen grows indifferent toward Church as well; he is unable to find solace in the religion which was supposed to hold him together in times of his family’s declining fortune and his solitude, and hence develops a feeling of detachment from everyone around him. Though he has given in to his desires he still remains affected by the guilt of his sins and realizes that from the sin of lust he paved way for the rest if the deadly sins. It is Father Arnall’s sermon about the soul’s salvation and extensive speech about death, judgment, heaven, and hell that prompts Stephen to confess his sins and repent.
The awareness of sin, guilt and religious morality which had been inculcated from his childhood is reinforced in his mind which ultimately leads him to suffer and shame. However, the return of physical desires causes him to rethink about his decision about repentance and we see he is unable to sustain his spiritual exaltation. It is at this intellectual growth when asked to choose his vocation as a priest, Stephen is forced to rethink about his religious beliefs and is unable to picture himself in the Church. He is repelled by the idea of leading such a passionless existence and understands that his destiny lies apart from what he had imagined, experiencing another one of his epiphanies which ultimately leads him towards his search for an identity free from the shackles of religion, nationality, and language. He seeks freedom from the bondage of the Church and his nation and deems it necessary for artistic creation. He, however, continues to employ the discourse of religion even after he has renounced it; we notice him turning not only to Aristotle but also to philosopher Aquinas, one of the fathers of the Church. In other words, although Stephen has parted from religion, the language with which he sets on to develop his new identity, remains, as Cranly puts it, ‘supersaturated with religion’.
Alienating from his religion and country, and using Lucifer’s declaration, ‘Non-Serviam: I will not serve’ as his motto, he challenges all authority, elaborating on his sense of artistic vocation to Cranly: ‘I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use – silence, exile, and cunning. Both religion and nationality had confined Stephen in his quest for identity so towards the end he completely breaks off with these two totalities. He is against the repressive ideologies and narrow-mindedness which seemed to have gripped Ireland and when Cranly tries to convince him of the fact that one’s country comes first, Stephen rejects this patriotism because for him, above all is to be an individualist. For Stephen Ireland is a prison where one’s emotional and intellectual growth is stunted – he calls out Irish people on their disloyalty and says that they never had a leader whom the Irish folks did not betray. Nearing the end, Stephen completely turns towards his own independent thinking as an artist and moves past his fears that the Church might be correct, and finally resolves to live without constraint. He decides to get rid of what Derrida calls ‘logocentrism’ which places at the center a concept such as nationalism or religion and lives in a world free from any centers. Therefore Stephen Dedalus flies past the religious and political labyrinth to seek his freedom as an artist, destined to learn his own wisdom. Like Icarus, he will be able to escape his imprisonment and soar high and beyond the restraints of family, religion, language, and politics.
Works Cited
- Ellman, Richard. James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982. https://monoskop.org/images/e/ec/EllmannRichardJamesJoyce.pdf
- Joyce, James. A Portrait Of the Artist as a Young Man. New Delhi. Fingerprint, 2020. Print.
- Gabler, Hans Walter. “The Christmas Dinner Scene, Parnell's Death, and the Genesis of ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.’” James Joyce Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 1, 1975, pp. 27–38. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25487233
- Hibbert, Jeffrey. “Joyce's Loss of Faith.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 34, no. 2, 2011, pp. 196–203. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/jmodelite.34.2.196
- Mullin, Katherine. “An Introduction to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” The British Library, 25 May 2016, www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/an-introduction-to-a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man
- Waith, Eugene M. “The Calling of Stephen Dedalus.” College English, vol. 18, no. 5, 1957, pp. 256–261. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/372469
