Women and James Joyce
...he first woman to enslave the mind of Stephen- a woman who is the on the light side of the spectrum- is one he barely knows, Emma Clery. They first meet on a train coming home from a party. She symbolizes the distant, pure-as-snow, divine nature of women. She is untainted, virginal, thus angelic, and therefore ethereal and representational of art, specifically poetry. “The image of Emma appeared before him and under her eyes the flood of shame rushed forth anew from his heart. If she knew to what his mind had subjected her or how his brute-like lust had torn and trampled upon her innocence! Was that boyish love? Was that chivalry? Was that poetry?” Stephen is obviously aware that all that Emma is to him does not mesh with his carnal actions. At one point in the novel, Stephen actually describes a spiritual wedding between them; a sign of his forgiveness, overseen by the Virgin Mary. “…he imagined that he stood near Emma in a wide land, humbly and in tears, bent and kissed the elbow of her [Virgin Mary’s] sleeve.” The second woman to consider is actually a faction of females- prostitutes. These characters are present in the darkest point of Stephen’s spectrum of femininity as impure, sexual, and common. These whores act as a distraction, an antithesis of art, which explains his later distain for them. At first, Stephen flees to the prostitute after accepting that his financial effort of essay writing has not helped his family. The prostitute offers him a chance to escape the dissonance around him, if only for a pound an hour. Love is art and ethereal- heavenly. This was base, carnal and worldly. Three women in this novel are enveloped in these extremities; those first two as diverse as night and day, fire and water; lust and true love. However, just as with these dissimilarities, there is a point in the spectrum where one meets the other, a point where the two may diverge or converge- a place that ¬¬¬¬ a choice must be made. On other words, this place is the fulcrum on which the spectrum lies, and it is within this category that the third woman, Mercedes, lays. Mercedes first appears in his boyhood, a character in Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. She gives him a grand romantic passion- he imagines her living in a white house within his town, and would act out the story with a neighborhood boy. She represents the romanticism that Stephen is too shy and removed to achieve. He may not have the courage to follow a girl after she places her hands in his pockets, but the pages of Mercedes’ tale will never be erased, and her story will remain always to provide him with retreat. Joyce also provides the means as to why Stephen is so detached from the rest of humanity; Stephen only idolizes those he had never really met. He is so encumbered in all that is art he cannot grasp what is truly real, what is today, or what is earthly. After he has touched them or found real contact, he sees them as common, and looks on them with distain. This is shown through his relationship with his mother on the grounds that towards the end of the novel, he is so disgusted by her falling social situation that even a sneeze invokes his anger. Joyce, in the last few pages, recounts a conversation between Stephen and his friend Cranly. They are discussing how Stephen’s mother wishes him to attend mass, and how he blatantly refused. Cranly believes that he should go to appease his mother because of some unspoken debt he owes her for bearing him forth. The conversation continues, and Stephen looks at his friend as if for the first time: “Yes. His face was handsome: his body was strong and hard. He had spoken of a mother’s love. He felt then the sufferings of women, the weaknesses of their bodies and souls; and would shield them with a strong and resolute arm, and would bow his mind to them. Away then: it is time to go.” Stephen’s sudden departure shows that he cannot relate, and he knows that such a life is not what he was meant for. Cranly’s character is meant to contrast Stephen’s. Cranly will someday love a woma...