In a fight against father figures, both real and metaphorical, Joyce’s hero follows in the footsteps of his Greek namesake by spreading his wings and soaring from religious conformity to spiritual freedom.
National Gallery of Ireland, Public Domain
The story of Daedalus, the mythical figure, is well-known. He is said to have been an inventor, architect, and artisan who pushed his nephew Perdix from the Acropolis. Consequently, he was forced to flee to Crete, where he was imprisoned by King Minos. Daedalus decides to build wings in order to escape from his imprisonment on the island.
Stephen Dedalus, the hero of James Joyce’s novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), resembles the mythic figure of Daedalus not only in his surname. Like the ancient story of Daedalus, Joyce’s novel is a story of liberation. Stephen’s first name, alluding to Saint Stephen, indicates that the protagonist’s gradual liberation from his Catholic faith is the central theme, though Stephen’s emancipation from his family background and questions of national identity are certainly also significant issues in the novel. In a way, Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes (And he turned his mind to unknown arts), Joyce’s epigraph to the novel taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, already conveys the entire story in a single line.
The beginning of Joyce’s largely autobiographical novel is set in a Jesuit college where Stephen is ridiculed by his classmates. He inadvertently loses his glasses and is consequently corporally punished by Father Dolan. Stephen’s decision to complain about Father Dolan’s behavior to the rector might be seen as marking the first step in his process of self-emancipation.
The second chapter recounts of Stephen’s sexual awakening. He reads The Count of Monte Cristo and begins to fantasize about Mercédès, a female figure from Dumas’s novel. Stephen’s difficulties to align his idealization of Mercédès with his reality first become apparent in the encounter with Emma, a young woman he becomes acquainted with after a party. Later, they are uncovered more explicitly when he begins to have recurrent intercourse with prostitutes.
Stephen develops strong feelings of guilt due to his behavior and repents during a religious retreat. His sense of penitence could be interpreted as signifying a symbolic move towards fitting in with societal norms. At the same time, his emotional struggle seems to lead him to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between his mind, body, and soul. There can be no doubt that Stephen’s involvement with his feelings of guilt is crucial for his later evolution into an artist.
Meanwhile, by urging Stephen to become a clergyman due to his devoutness, the Jesuits provoke an intense inner conflict between faith and artistic ambitions in him. Ultimately, this results, metaphorically speaking, in Stephen’s shifting away from his surname towards Daedelian mythology.
Stephen leaves behind both his family, including his father, who had arranged a place for him at the university, as well as the church. Eloping to the seashore, he comes upon a group of friends from his school but follows his own path and decisively frees himself from the restraints which formerly held him back and the emotional effect he experiences is intense.
This is, by the way, also the point of the story at which he meets the girl whom he perceives as a symbol of such radiant beauty and vitality that it allows him to finally align his idealistic view of women with reality. In Stephen’s perception, she is, to put it differently, the word made flesh.
The last chapter of the novel recounts of Stephen’s final steps in his rebellion against the oppressive father figures of the previous chapters and towards artistry. Joyce shifts from a third person to a first-person narrator at this point, highlighting the sprouting of Stephen’s new identity: He is now an artist.