"His Lips Would Not Bend."

In James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce uses Stephen’s relationships with women throughout the novel to show Stephen’s growth as a character. Joyce mostly focus’s on the relationship between mother and son during the first part of the novel, as Stephen struggles to find out the wrongs and rights when he kisses his mother. The novel then changes to a sexual nature when Stephen tests his innocence with the beautiful Mercedes. Then towards the end he discovers his struggles with letting go when he shares a relationship with a woman as oppose to try and control it for himself. Stephen’s evolution as a character connects mostly to the Oedipus theory and then hits a feministic view. Joyce also use’s symbols to better understand Stephen’s levels of maturity expressed throughout the novel.
Stephen shares a strong relationship with his mother throughout the novel mostly until Wells confronts Stephen one day about this special bond. “Tell us Dedalus, do you kiss your mother every night before you go to bed?”(26) The idea of kissing ones mother connects to the Oedipus complex, when Oedipus removed his eyes because he was so ashamed.
“When they were grown up he was going to marry Eileen. He his under the table. His mother said: --O Stephen will apologize.
Dante said: --O, if not, the eagles will come and pull out his eyes.
Pull out his eyes, Apologize, Apologize, Pull out his eyes.”(21)


A child of Stephen’s age starts to develop this idea of being a father figure, which is ironic seeing as his mother already has him matched with Eileen. Eileen in a way
symbolizes this idea of being a mother and having that kind of loving relationship Stephen looks for throughout the novel.
Eileen also connects to this idea of being a mother, “Eileen had long white hands. One evening when playing tig she had put her hands over his eyes: long and white and thin and cold and soft. That was ivory: a cold white thing. That was the meaning of Tower of Ivory.”(45) The symbol of hands connects to the idea of castration, keeping Stephen from becoming a man because he can not break from this mother bond he shares with women. The passage also brings up The Blessed Virgin Mary when it mentions “Tower of Ivory” which connects to Stephen because he shares this strong connection with Mary through most of the novel. Stephen’s reaction with his mother however strongly shows his innocence throughout the beginning of the novel which continues for the next few chapters. This innocent idea is brought up in the Psychoanalytical Criticism when they use the symbol of eyes to better understand Stephen’s state of mind about the situation. Oedipus pulls out his eyes for doing more then just kissing his mother, ashamed of all the faces he would have to see when they found out. “The loss of eyes is an image of castration.”(281) Kissing one’s mother shows the loss of also masculinity that Stephen feels in the moment when he cannot answer Well’s question. When Stephen breaks from this idea it’s symbolically shows the leaving from the womb.
“He sprang from bed, the reeking odor pouring down his throat, clogging and revolting his entrails. Air! The air of heaven! He stumbled towards the window, groaning and almost fainting with sickness. At the washstand a convulsion seized him within: and, clasping his cold forehead wildly, he vomited profusely in agony.”(128) The passage goes back to the idea of Stephen coming out of the womb and into a chaotic world. He has to learn to fend for himself in this cold place with the help of no one. This is also another way to show his lose of innocence because it’s the break from his mother and her watch over him. Stephen no longer needs his mother kissing him goodnight, he needs to man up and find a new level of maturity which he reaches just in time to meet the beautiful Mercedes in the garden.
Stephen meets the next woman in his life to help him explore this idea of kissing and more is the beautiful Mercedes, only known to him through dreams.
“As he brooded upon her image, a strange unrest crept into his blood.”(69) Stephen is unknown to this certain sexual feeling he is experiencing inside of him. “The noise of children at play annoyed him,” (69) he’s beginning to change, “he did not want to play.”(69)
This is moment he matures one step further. Stephen, suddenly interested in a mature manner is unable to go back to his childhood. He loses his innocence not only to Mercedes but also to himself. After the kissing his mother incident, Stephen goes into the situation with a mind set that he doesn’t want to be immature and young anymore, he suddenly has a desire to go against everything he believes in to mature.
A wise decision in Joyce’s eyes because he then sets the character to a level where he can start believing and making decisions for himself, “he wanted to meet the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld.”(69) Stephen is finally able to let himself go, and so does Joyce. “They would be alone, surrounded by
darkness and silence: and in that moment of supreme tenderness he would be transfigured.”(69) Stephen’s innocence “would fall from him,”(69) and so it does.
As Stephen goes on his journey of becoming a man he thinks of another beautiful girl named Emma who exists only in Stephen’s imagination as a “flattering, taunting, searching, exciting his heart”(323) kind of girl. Dreaming up these women shows how Stephen feels uncontrollable when he in a relationship with another person. This leads to why he makes up these women, who only bend for him and nothing else. “Stephen gains symbolic mastery over Emma’s erratic movements.”(323) If Stephen does not have this control he feels ashamed and inferior to the women around him. “He wanted to be held firmly in her arms, to be caressed slowly, slowly, slowly. In her arms he felt he has suddenly become strong and fearless and sure of himself. But his lips would not bend to kiss her”(99) This passage shows that even though Stephen loves being in a woman’s arm he still suffers from that stubbornness of not wanting to admit the love he feels. In ways this shows that Stephen is still somewhat innocent and never really does grow up from his immature ways. “Take hands together, my dear children, and you will be happy together and your hearts will love each other.”(111) Stephen builds up this idea that love is a blissful thing that just happens and it can be controlled whenever found however that’s not true. Stephen dreamed up Mercedes and then dreamed up Emma, showing that he cannot accept the fact that these women don’t truly exist and he pulls away from potential real lovers. “Asked me was I writing poems? About whom? I asked her. This confused her more and I felt sorry and mean. Turned off that valve at once,”(223) Stephen thinks he can handle women but in fact he cannot, because he is a man and



thinks he can control women it is keeping him from maturing to the next level.
So Joyce in fact leaves the reader thinking that Stephen has grown from all his mistakes and found himself when truly he is still at a loss to life.
Joyce uses women to show that Stephen has evolved as a character but at the same time he is still a naïve boy not sure how to act. The relationships he forms with all of the female characters show Stephen can learn from his mistakes as he does at the end with Davin’s story.
“The words of Davin’s story sang in his memory and the figure of the woman in the story stood forth reflected in other figures of the peasant women whom he had seen standing in the doorways at Clane as the college cars drove by, as a type of her race and his own, a batlike soul waking to the consciousness of itself in the darkness and the secrecy and loneliness and, through the eyes and voice and gesture of a woman without with guile, calling the stranger to her bed.”(165)
Stephen believes that he has finally found that connection he had been looking for with all the women in his life. He thinks he understands the life a prostitute leads, but this is untrue. Going back to his relationship with Emma he believe that anyone can just fall in love and get married, its just that simple but its not. I think the women in Stephen’s life somewhat helped him thought when it comes down to the understanding. More so his relationship with the Virgin Mary who he did look up too when he was lost in his sin and the idea’s of wrong and right in the church.


His mother taught him that as a young man he needs to break away from the innocence he posses with his mother and come out of the womb.
“Like the Court of Monte Cristo, he turns away from Emma in proud abnegation, determined to possess his mistress wholly through art.”(323) Joyce writes as Stephen Dedalus grows into the man he was looking to be and thanks to the women he meets, they help him evolve into something much more, the artist.