In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, our protagonist Stephan Daedalus briefly becomes infatuated with a girl he meets at a party, initially only referring to her as E____ C_____ in a poem he writes the day after. We eventually learn that her name is Emma, but that's just about all we learn about her. Instead of engaging in any meaningful conversation with Emma, Daedalus merely gawks at her throughout the night, sure that she is equally enamored with him.
Stephan quickly develops an attachment to Emma, within the time from seeing her at the party, and staring at her on the tram. He begins to think that they had met in a previous life, thinking he had "yielded to [her] a thousand times". Stephan has fantasies of grabbing her and kissing her, so certain she wanted him too. We see Stephan's fantasies of a moonlit romantic encounter in the section before, where he would yield to his 'Mercedes' and transform into the fearless and suave gentleman all teenage boys have wished to be at one point or another. As we see in the end of section two, Stephan keeps trying to make his Mercedes fantasy into a reality-- describing both his encounter with a prostitute, with Emma, and his imagined encounter with Mercedes with the same velvety and idealized tone. We see Stephan projecting his idealized vision of Mercedes onto Emma, filling in her personality character with an idealized 'dream girl'.
What really struck me about this passage was just how much of myself I saw in Stephan during it. While reading, I remembered all of the times I had pined for whomever I had 'fallen in love with' at that time. I remembered what it was like to become enamored with a person so quickly that you feel like it was destiny. Too scared to talk to them, I'd wait, sure they'd 'come to me when the time was right'. I think that since I've experienced a lot of what Stephan felt during the first two sections of part two, it helped humanize the character to me; and while not making him likable, made me more invested in him.
The fact that Joyce makes sure to show just how arrogantly Daedalus sees the world also made me enjoy the section more. I said that I've experienced what Daedalus felt, not that I was particularly proud of it. I think Joyce knew that this was a particularly 'cringey' time for people, so the fact he wrote it in such a tongue-in-cheek manner helps the reader to laugh at their younger selves.
When we talked about this in class a lot of people seemed to reprimand Stephen a little for the fact that he couldn't make a move. People laughed at his waiting up for the girl, and his brooding in the corner, but I thought that this was some of the most normal Stephen we'd seen. Like you said, this is actually relatable. I feel like unlike a lot of what Stephen does alter, this is classic tween behavior.
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons I enjoy this novel is because of how realistic it is, as if James Joyce is recounting his own adolescent years and the awkwardness that was a large part of it. I could see Stephen's actions totally happening not necessarily in just me, but any teenager. It is an interesting dynamic of seeing how Stephen's arrogance and awkwardness will affect his actions and thinking, which are sometimes hilarious (such as him staring in his mom's mirror after he's wrote a poem).
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting to see how much emotion Stephen saw Emma as having without having any interaction with her. He watched her from across the room and later on the train, and was sure that she must also have feelings for him. But she never actually gave him any reason to believe that she also had feelings. At this point, the connection that he felt was just him fantasizing about Emma and how he would like to have a relationship with her.
ReplyDeleteI thought the bit on the train was totally realistic (and kind of cute) for an... eleven-year-old? (Twelve? I don't remember his age)I think that's something most people can relate to -- getting a crush on someone as a kid/preteen, failing to see how superficial it is and obsessing about them to the point of building a fantasy world around the idea of your relationship. It was a little weird when Stephen was ~18-19 and still having the same idealized thoughts about Emma, but ehh, classic Stephen.
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