Question- What do you think of the various women that come in Stephen's life in the novel?

Answer -

Apart from his mother and Dante, the first-person from the opposite sex who figures in Stephen's life is Eileen. It is her white hands and golden hair that first stir his boyish notion about girls. His relationship with Eileen is not shown as amounting to much in the ultimate analysis. Then there are the romantic dreams about Mercedes (a character from the novel The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas). She is the beloved of the novel's hero Edmond Dantes. Stephens pictures himself grandly rejecting her because she had earlier sighted his love. The next person from the opposite sex to figure in Stephen's life is Emma whom he meets at the party at Harold Cross. With drawing from the other children, he relishes his isolation. Emma glances repeatedly and invitingly in his direction. She gives rise to a feverish excitement in Together they take the last tram home. They stand on the steps of the tram. He is on a step above hers. As they talk, she keeps coming up to join him on his step. He knows that she is making an advance to him. And yet he is unable to respond in kind. The failure bothers him but all that comes out of it is an attempt to write a poem to Emma.

Two year laters there is a school- play in which Stephen figures. He works himself up into an excited romantic mood anticipating a meeting with Emma after she has seen the play. The whole thing collapses when he does not find Emma in the audience. The sexuality that might have found an outlet through this relationship is diverted elsewhere culminating in his experience with the prostitute. In this experience he is able to find not only relief from the goadings of his lust but a new self-assurance. After a cycle of sin and guilt the wading girl becomes for him a way out of his dilemma. She becomes the catalytic agent for creativity.

In the final chapter, Stephen imagines that Emma flirts with Father Moran. And yet the sight of her near the entrance of the library gives use to the thought that she might be innocent. There is a surge of emotions but much does not come out of it. He does write a poem to her and pictures her in remorse. When Emma ignores him outside the library he thinks that she is consciously rebuffing him and that cleanly is pursuing her. The diary jottings at the end tell us that she has been wanting to make contact with him. She wants to know why she sees so little of him and whether he still writes poems. His reply is a rebuff, aimed at embarrassing her. And yet he cannot fully get over the attraction he feels for her. It is another thing that the call for exiling himself to which his soul responded makes him push her (temporarily) to the back of his mind.

Essentially, Stephen's inability to connect fully with girls of his age is tied up with his aloofness from most his compatriots at school and university. It is partly timidity and partly a feeling of self importance which prevents him from reaching out to people. His 'notions' about what an 'artist' should be like, also contribute to his isolation. In general, his encounters with the girls are awkward and unsatisfactory. The fallout quite often is that he submits to crude sexual fantasies.

For the larger part of the novel, Stephen is unable to think of woman except in fixed, polarised terms. Most of the time Stephen is able to come to terms with woman symbolically as a strong maternal figure (even the prostitute, in a sense, mothers him). His clumsy response to Emma towards the end of the novel is a function of a monk like withdrawl into the spiritual- heroic refrigerating apparatus that he has. The pre eminence of the virgin/ mother model prevents Stephen from approaching woman comprehensive and inclusive terms through woman is represented in A Portrait in a wide range of figures and images.

We can conclude that, in general terms, 'woman' as image can be seen as having two contradictory (and almost mutually exclusive) sets of meaning. At one level woman' is possessive and a kind of stumbling block where Stephen's progress toward freedom and creative art is concerned. His mother largely and Eileen, Mercedes and E.C. partly belong here. At the other level 'Woman' is a source of freedom and enlightenment. The wading girl and before her the prostitute belong to this category.

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