thing and mean something else. This also explains his trouble in the future with solving
the riddles and puzzles presented to him by his classmates at Clongowes. Stephen is very
thoughtful and observant and looks for his own way to explain or rationalize the things
that he does not understand. In this manner he can find those traits that he associates with
the Blessed Mary in his protestant playmate Eileen. Her hands are “long and white and
thin and cold and soft. That was ivory: a cold white thing. That was the meaning of
Tower of Ivory” (p.36). “Her fair hair had streamed out behind her like gold in the sun”
(p.43). To Stephen that is the meaning of House of Gold. He then attributes Eileen’s
ivory hands to the fact that she is a girl and generalized these traits to all females. This
produces a major conflict for Stephen when his tutor, Dante, tells him not to play with
Eileen because she is a Protestant and Protestants don’t understand the Catholic faith and
therefore will make a mockery of it. His ideas about women being unattainable are
confirmed. The Virgin Mary is divine and therefore out of reach for mortals. Now Eileen,
the human representation of the Blessed Mary, is out of reach as well because Stephen is
not allowed to play with her. In chapter two an amazing transformation takes place in
Stephen from a young innocent child who believes women are unattainable and who
idealizes the Virgin Mary, into a young teen with awakening sexual desires. As Stephen
matures into adolescence, he becomes increasingly aware of his sexuality, which at times
is confusing to him. At the beginning of the second chapter in A Portrait, we find Stephen
associating feminine beauty with the heroine Mercedes in Alexander Dumont Pere’s The
Count of Monte Cristo. “Outside Blackrock, on the road that led to the mountains, stood
a small whitewashed house in the garden of which grew many rosebushes: and in this
house, he told himself, another Mercedes lived….there appeared an image of himself,
grown older and sadder, standing in a moonlit garden with Mercedes who had so many
years before slighted his love…”(p. 62-3). These fantasies about Mercedes are the first
real step for Stephen in challenging the church’s view of women, but again he feels as
though this image of women is out of his reach. She is a fictional character in a Romantic
Adventure novel and he can only imagine himself with her. Although Mercedes may not
be real, the feelings that Stephen has and the emotions she provokes in him are very real.
“…As he brooded upon her image, a strange unrest crept into his blood.” (p.64). “…but a
premonition which led him on told him that this image would, without any overt act of
his, encounter him… and in that moment of supreme tenderness he would be
transfigured. He would fade into something impalpable under her eyes and then in a
moment, he would be transfigured. Weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall
from him that magic moment.” (p.65). Stephen realizes that some transformation is going
to take place, and Joyce emphasizes the words “transfigured” and “moment” to indicate
the kind of impact it will have on Stephen. At this point in the novel, Stephen attributes
this “premonition” to his attraction to young Emma Clery. “…Amid the music and
laughter her glance traveled to his corner, flattering, taunting, searching, exciting his
heart.” “…Sprays of her fresh warm breath flew gaily above her cowled head and her
shoes tapped blithely on the glassy road.” (p. 69). As they wait for the last tram from a
Christmas party “His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide.” Joyce
carefully uses these words to ease the reader into the transition to sensual imagery to
portray females. These words convey Stephen’s feelings of excitement, and a new
conflict arises within him. He who still believes in the Catholic view of divine women
now feels troubled over his growing sexual drives. Stephen realizes that she is flirting
with him by the way she “urges her vanities” yet he is tempted to call her on it. He wants
to hold on to her and kiss her and he associates the whole situation with the way in which
Eileen had suddenly run down the path in a peal of laughter hoping he would chase her.
The conflict within Stephen whether or not to kiss Emma stems from his continuing
religious beliefs that women are holy and not to be defiled, and like with Mercedes, he is
forced to be content in fulfilling his wishes only in his head. This encounter with Emma
does place females at a slightly more attainable level for Stephen and we are able to see
how it begins to shape his ultimate ideals of feminine beauty. However connected to the
church Stephen feels, it is impossible for him to just push these feelings away from
himself and ignore them. He decides to write a poem about Emma Clery and for the first
time, we see Stephen successfully use art as a means of expression and relief. In his
poem which is modeled after one from his favorite poet, Byron, he acts out what he
wishes he would have done and that is to give Emma a kiss. Again this illustrates a side
of Stephen that is not comfortable with abstraction. He has not yet come to the
realization that he is not unlike other boys his age. This poem which is addressed to
E____C____, starts out with Ad Majorem Dei Gloriem, a Latin phrase meaning, “For the
Greater Glory of God” and ends with Laus Deo Semper meaning, “Praise to God
Always”. This is especially interesting because the poem merges both religion and art
without Stephen’s knowledge that this is where the heart of the conflict lies. It becomes
an even greater conflict for Stephen when, as time passes, he finds it more and more
difficult to resist the temptations of his sexual urges. He mentally defiles “with patience
whatever image had attracted his eyes” (p.99) and turns those images which had been
innocent by day into cunning and sinful images at night. His urges grow and become so
strong that Stephen is no longer able to resist temptation and crosses that line into
wretched sinner. The next major step in Stephen’s transformation is his visit to the
prostitute. The setting for this visit carries all of the elements of a Black Mass. “Women
and girls dressed in long vivid gowns traversed the street…The yellow gasflames arose
before his troubled vision against the vapoury sky, burning as if before an altar.” (p.100).
The long vivid gowns of the women and girls could be like those of the priests and the
yellow gasflames are meant to conjure up images of decay upon the altar. As the
prostitute approaches Stephen, Joyce uses the word “detain” to show how the prostitute
may have held Stephen against his will. This word becomes significant later on in
Stephen’s discussion with the priest in chapter five as the priest tells Stephen the
difference between the traditional use of the word detain and it’s use in the marketplace.
Virgin Mary was “detained in the full company of the saints” (p.188) is different from “I
hope I am not detaining you” (p.188). In this way, Joyce implies that Stephen was
seduced by the prostitute and attempted to resist her up until the very last moment before
she kissed him. Stephen does not make a move towards the prostitute, but instead waits
in the middle of the room until she comes to him. He will not bend to kiss her. He feels
reassured by her embrace and longed for her to just hold and caress him. Perhaps he
regarded her as a mother figure and he gained strength from this encounter. Joyce’s
description of the room, the obscene doll with it’s legs spread, the way the prostitute
lures him in and bends his lips to hers for him gives the reader the impression that
Stephen is an innocent and the prostitute is the sinner. This scene puts a new perspective
on that holy image of women for Stephen. It is a sharp contrast to those ideas of holiness
and purity and innocent shyness that he associated with Emma, and of course, the
Blessed Mary. It is even a contradiction to the image he had of Mercedes. Although this
encounter awakens a sense of freedom in Stephen that he will not be able to suppress
later on in the novel, he still cannot help but feel overwhelming guilt about what he has
done. At the retreat, he listens to Father Arnell’s sermon about hell that seems to be
targeted directly at him, turning his tremendous guilt into fear. He has failed to avoid sin
and for that he will suffer the most horrible fate that anyone could ever
imagine…spending eternity in hell. He feels so ashamed that he is unable to repent in his
own church at Clongowes, but rather wishes to find a place as far removed from the
college as possible. This shame and guilt makes him vulnerable when the director at
Clongowes confronts him about becoming a priest. He envisions the power he would
have and thinks that if he were a priest that his superior piety would save him from the
wrath of hell. For him it seemed the only plausible escape. His experience with the
prostitute is essential in Stephen’s reanalysis of his attraction to Emma Clery. He realizes
now that her flirtatious gestures were not reserved for him alone, and he suspected that
she flaunted her charm to many men. He becomes angry at the idea that women did not
remain pure for their own sake, but only out of their religious fear that their souls would
be damned if they sinned against the church. This point seems to be the height of
Stephen’s confusion until his encounter with the Bird Girl, the final step in his complete
transfiguration into the artist. While waiting for his father outside the publichouse,
Stephen wandered on to Bull to reflect and to escape the anxiety he felt waiting to hear
word about the university. He heard a few of his classmates calling out to him and the
sounds of his own name made him think of the mythical Dedalus. Like the myth, Stephen
wanted to fly up like a bird. This may be a foreshadowing of Stephen’s leaving Ireland
and flying past the “nets” which would hold him back. He feels as though he is being
reborn into adulthood and has finally reached that point in his life where he is capable of
fulfilling his calling in life. This calling that he feels is unlike anything that has ever
spoken to him before and it invokes in him an incredible freedom of spirit. As his mind,
body and soul are still soaring from this “ecstasy of flight”, he repeatedly mentions that
he is alone. He is happy and free, but he is alone. Then he sees her. “A girl stood before
him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one whom magic
had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird.” (p.171). The imagery in
the following passage and the particular words Joyce uses to present that imagery are
very meaningful. The girl is the perfect balance between Stephen’s two extreme ideas of
women. “Her thighs, fuller and softhued as ivory, were bared almost to the
hip…”(p.171). She is “delicate” and “pure” and she has all the qualities of innocent
virginity, but at the same time, she exposes her flesh in a sensual manner and exhibits a
“mortal beauty”. Stephen’s comparison of her to a crane and a dove shows an important
relationship between the girl and Stephen’s freedom. She was neither virgin nor whore.
She was attainable. “To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild
angel had appeared to him…” (p.172). She certainly seemed divine to Stephen who
associated her presence to the calling of a life of art. He knows immediately that if he
had been destined to a life in the church that this would have been the kind of calling he
should have experienced. Instead he realizes that he cannot become a priest because he is
unable to adhere to those physiological restrictions demanding of the profession. He has
also discovered that to err is human and to have desires of the flesh is natural. He is no
longer disgusted by human desires and realizes how beautiful love, passion, and devotion
can be from an artist’s perspective. Stephan Dedalus’s transformation into a “priest of the
arts” is parallel to the early life of James Joyce. Both struggle to deal with the conflicts of
childhood and adolescence to find a balance in which they can happily live. Since A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is written in third person, yet employs the
characteristics of the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, the use of descriptive language is
essential to the reader’s understanding of the novel as a whole. James Joyce excellently
uses his talent to successfully communicate Stephen’s feelings so that we, the reader, can
understand the development of his attitudes and ideals about feminine beauty.
HTML1DocumentEncodingutf-8Symbolism in The Scarlet
Letter
“The common definition says that a symbol is a sign or token of something… We take
symbols like these pretty much for granted. They are a part of everyday experience. In
literature, matters are a little more complicated. Literary symbols usually don’t have
instantly recognizable meanings. Rather they take their meanings from the work of which
they are part” (”The Scarlet Letter” 8). An example of symbols that most take for granted
would be the rosebush, which Hawthorne selects a flower from as an offering to the
reader, to the elfish child Pearl, to the scarlet letter A; these are all symbols that
Hawthorne uses. The average reader may take it for granted, but each symbol within this
novel has a purpose. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses all of these symbols to build his story, to
make it come to life. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is created around the
different symbols within the novel. The most obvious symbol of the novel is the one from
which the book takes its title, the scarlet letter A. The scarlet letter must be separated
from the literary form, in order to find full understanding of the letter. The literary
symbol for he scarlet letter is a “concrete and an untranslatable presentation of an idea”
(Weiss 19). The scarlet letter cannot find its way into the real life, except through the
“meditation of the symbol” (Weiss 20). The scarlet letter is therefore a punishment by the
Puritan society’s desire to bring for the truth, but it was brought to life by Hester.
Hawthorne also lets the scarlet letter take on many other forms. The scarlet letter not only
stands for adulteress, but for angel and able. It is also a reminder to both Hester Prynne
and Arthur Dimmesdale of the sins that they have brought upon themselves. The Puritan
community is another form that the scarlet letter A symbolizes. The scarlet letter A is a
reminder for Hester, Dimmesdale, and the Puritan community of their sins. For Hester,
the scarlet letter represents her sin of adultery. She becomes the scarlet letter, taking the
symbol upon herself. “She gives up her individuality, she becomes the general symbol at
which the preacher and moralist might point, and which they might vivify and embody
their images of woman’s frailty and sinful passion” (Hawthorne 74). Dimmesdale also
becomes letter, just as Hester took it upon herself, he does too. He lets the letter take him
over by tattooing it upon his chest. He also lets the scarlet letter engulf him, making him
weak and vulnerable. His weakness is shown when Hester and he meet in the forest, for
he immediately agrees to run away and leave his problems behind. For the Puritans the
scarlet letter “provokes hostile feelings in the citizens of Boston” (”Scarlet Letter” 8).
Weiss explains the symbolism of the scarlet letter in the following paragraph: “The
world’s great symbols, as they emerge in religious icons – symbols of rebirth,
rejuvenation, resurrection – are seen as memorials to the anxieties that attend our
biological rhythms. The anxiety is mastered by being displayed to a universal religious,
scientific, philosophical, or… a meaningful aesthetic experience. The anxiety is mastered
by dint of repetitions, by the substitution of controlled rituals, and by condensation into
unified and benign experience” (Weiss 21). This shows that the scarlet letter fulfills for
the Puritans a social and religious function; the letter creates a story for them to tell and
to show the sins that Hester has committed. Another symbol the scarlet letter A takes on
is adultery, able, and angel. The scarlet letter stands for adultery because of the crime
that Hester committed. Hester committed the crime with Dimmesdale and brought forth a