Barron's Book Notes

James Joyce's
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

The Christmas Dinner Scene


Still, Joyce and Stephen have much in common. Both 
were indelibly marked by their upbringing in drab, 
proud, Catholic Dublin, a city that harbored dreams of 
being the capital of an independent nation but which in 
reality was a backwater ruled by England. Like Stephen, 
Joyce was the eldest son of a family that slid rapidly 
down the social and economic ladder. When Joyce was 
born in 1882, the family was still comfortably off. But its 
income dwindled fast after Joyce's sociable, witty, hard-
drinking father, John Stanislaus, lost his political job- as 
Stephen's father Simon loses his- after the fall of the Irish 
leader and promoter of independence Charles Stewart 
Parnell. Although the loss of the post was not directly 
related to Parnell's fall, Joyce's father worshipped "the 
uncrowned king of Ireland" and blamed his loss on anti-
Parnell forces like the Roman Catholic Church. (Joyce 
portrays the kind of strong emotions Parnell stirred up in 
the Christmas dinner scene in Chapter One of Portrait 
of the Artist.) Like Simon Dedalus, the jobless John 
Stanislaus Joyce was forced to move his family 
frequently, often leaving rent bills unpaid.

PLOT
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man opens with the 
earliest childhood memories of its hero, Stephen Dedalus. 
Some of these memories are happy and musical. Others 
hold terror. His governess threatens that if he does not 
apologize for a mysterious misdeed, eagles will pull out 
his eyes. This is the first time- but not the last- the 
sensitive and gifted boy will be pressed to conform to the 
ways of his world, Roman Catholic Dublin in the late 
nineteenth century.
Stephen becomes one of the best students at the 
fashionable boarding school, Clongowes Wood College. 
Socially, however, he is an outsider, bullied by the other 
boys. When he returns home to spend Christmas with 
his family, the holiday proves a disappointment. The 
festive dinner is disrupted by a bitter argument over 
Ireland's political idol, Charles Stewart Parnell, whose 
affair with a married woman has divided both the nation 
and Stephen's home. His father, Simon; a dinner guest, 
John Casey; and his governess, Dante Riordan, go at 
each other's throats. The small boy is dismayed to see his 
hero, Parnell, attacked, and to see such hate and 
intolerance among the adults he has been told to respect.
SIMON DEDALUS
.Simon Dedalus' character is revealed gradually 
from the first chapter of the novel to the last. To the 
infant Stephen he is just a hairy face. A slightly older 
Stephen knows he is a "gentleman." During the 
Christmas dinner in Chapter One, you see that Simon 
can be a genial but argumentative host. In Chapter Two 
you see that while he may fall from respectability 
himself, he still believes in it for others
Stephen must attend an upper-class school run by the 
Jesuits, not the Christian Brothers' school that caters to 
the lower-class Irish- though Simon is rapidly becoming 
part of that class.
As the novel progresses, Simon seems to represent 
both what is admirable about Ireland and what is 
destructive. Simon is a good fellow, a fine talker, a lover 
of politics and witty argument. But he is an irresponsible 
head of a family, incapable of keeping a job, saving 
money, or refusing a drink.
Stephen feels alienated both from his father's strengths 
and from his weaknesses. He feels superior to Simon's 
irresponsibility. But he envies his father's robustness, 
gregariousness, and warmth. When in a bar Simon 
declares that in his youth he was a better man than 
Stephen is now, part of Stephen fears his father's 
judgment is correct.
.
DANTE RIORDAN
Stephen's governess, Dante, is an intelligent, well-
informed woman of strong convictions and an ardent 
Irish nationalist. Her hair brushes sport the colors of her 
political heroes but she strips the colors off when the 
politicians lose her favor.
Most of all, Dante is a fervent Catholic, a devout 
believer who almost became a nun. You can see her 
either as a good Church member or as a religious bigot. 
When her hero, the nationalist Parnell, is condemned by 
the Church, she rejects him. The Christmas dinner 
scene is proof of her strong feelings. Her rigidity is a 
symbol of the kind of Catholic thinking against which 
Stephen rebels.

 IRISH NATIONALISM
Centuries of turbulent, often bloody, history have left 
their mark on the Ireland of Portrait of the Artist, and on 
Stephen Dedalus. The most troubling issue of that history 
was Ireland's difficult relations with England.
England, which from the twelfth century had 
controlled portions of Ireland, gained near-complete 
dominance of the island in the sixteenth century. Irish 
resentment of the conquerors was strong, especially when 
under King Henry VIII the English monarchy became 
Protestant, while Ireland clung to Roman Catholicism. 
Irish Catholics became victims of religious persecution in 
their own country. Unjust agricultural policies also 
contributed to the difficulties. Most Irish land was owned 
by absentee landlords and leased to tenant farmers. It was 
an inefficient system that was in part responsible for a 
series of Irish famines, the most terrible of which 
occurred after the failure of the potato crop in 1848. Over 
a million people died during this famine.
From time to time, revolutionary heroes- like the 
eighteenth-century patriots Wolfe Tone and Hamilton 
Rowan admired by young Stephen- aroused Irish hopes 
for independence, only to be crushed. In Joyce's youth, 
confrontation was once again in the air. The Land 
League, led by Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart 
Parnell, had campaigned successfully for agricultural 
reforms. Other groups campaigned for Irish cultural 
independence by promoting the use of Gaelic, Ireland's 
native tongue, rather than the English brought by 
Ireland's conquerors. Perhaps most important was the 
campaign for Irish Home Rule, self-government through 
an independent Irish parliament.
The Home Rule campaign was led by Charles Stewart 
Parnell. If your family has ever been divided over a key 
political issue, you'll understand the vehemence of the 
argument over the Parnell question when you read the 
Christmas dinner scene in Chapter One. Parnell's 
leadership in the British Parliament had succeeded in 
winning over his colleagues to Home Rule. Before the 
bill was passed, however, Parnell's enemies exposed his 
personal relationship with the married Katherine (Kitty) 
O'Shea, with whom he had been living secretly for many 
years.
The Parnell affair divided Ireland. Parnell's own party 
deposed him, the Catholic Church denounced him, and 
his British backers withdrew their support. Parnell died 
of pneumonia shortly afterwards, in 1891, when Joyce 
was nine. (In the infirmary scene in Chapter One, the 
feverish Stephen dreams of his hero's funeral procession.)

STYLE-
Many readers find Joyce's style one of Portrait of the 
Artist's greatest strengths. It was Joyce's aim to make his 
prose "supple [flexible] enough to vary the curve of an 
emotion," and he shattered tradition to achieve this. He 
used all the resources of the English language- meaning 
and sound, as well as structure and spelling- to paint 
Stephen Dedalus and his world. If you like to read a story 
told in a traditional way, you may become impatient with 
Joyce's style. But if you like books, plays, movies, or 
pictures that suggest what things mean instead of telling 
you directly, you'll enjoy Joyce's world of words.
Joyce is certainly capable of writing in a concrete, 
realistic manner. The warm, heavy smell of turkey, ham, 
and celery at Christmas dinner, the clots of liquid dung 
at the cowyard at Stradbrook- Joyce makes you smell and 
see these things as richly as does a great realistic writer 
like Dickens. But for Joyce, language did more than just 
portray surface reality. It was also linked to an inner 
world of emotion. Words have shades of meaning and 
sound that release feelings below your conscious 
awareness. For example, the repetition of "white," "cold," 
and "damp," and the images of "fattish white hands," and 
a damp cold rat with two "black slimy eyes" tell you more 
effectively than long explanations could that Stephen 
feels very lonely and anxious as a new boy at school.
POINT OF VIEW
Just as the literary style of Portrait of the Artist is 
more subtle and in some ways more difficult than that of 
traditional novels, so is the novel's point of view. Portrait 
of the Artist is, in general, an example of a third-person, 
limited omniscient narrative. Stephen Dedalus doesn't 
tell his story himself. But in general you perceive only 
what he perceives. You don't enter other characters' 
minds. Only occasionally- as at the Christmas dinner 
scene, or during the trip to Cork with Simon Dedalus- do 
you even hear or see other characters who haven't been 
completely filtered through Stephen's perceptions. 
Indeed, the book focuses so closely on Stephen, and takes 
you so deeply into his mind, that at times it resembles a 
first-person narrative.
In fact, however, the book is a little more tricky than 
that. If Portrait of the Artist were a first-person narrative, 
or a traditional third-person, limited omniscient 
narrative, it would be difficult for you to get outside of 
Stephen. You would see him only as he sees himself. You 
could judge him only as he judges himself. But that isn't 
what happens.
First, Joyce very occasionally lets you step outside of 
Stephen's consciousness. For example, at the end of the 
Christmas dinner scene, you're told that Stephen raises 
"his terror-stricken face." Stephen, of course, can't see his 
own face while sitting at the dinner table-but by taking 
you outside Stephen for this instant, Joyce emphasizes 
the impact the vicious argument has had upon the young 
boy.
More subtly, and more frequently, Joyce lets you 
stand just slightly outside Stephen- in this way giving 
you the distance you need to judge him- through the 
language he uses to describe Stephen's thoughts. For 
example, in Chapter Two, Stephen dreams of finding "in 
the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so 
constantly beheld.... They would meet quietly as if they 
had known each other and had made their tryst... and at 
that moment of supreme tenderness he would be 
transfigured." Some readers feel such sentences are 
merely accurate descriptions of Stephen's thoughts; they 
feel that since Stephen approves of his own thoughts, 
Joyce does too. But many other readers feel that Joyce has 
purposely laid it on a little too thick here, and in many 
other parts of the book. They feel the language he uses to 
express Stephen's thoughts is purposely a little too 
"poetic," because Stephen himself is a little too poetic. He 
takes himself, his art, and his rebellion too seriously. 
Even the famous lines- "Welcome, O life! I go to 
encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience 
and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated 
conscience of my race"- can be taken as a brave vow or as 
an eloquent-sounding but hollow promise that Stephen 
won't be able to fulfill.

 CHAPTER_ONE

The three episodes that follow present Stephen as a 
young child at Clongowes (its full name is Clongowes 
Wood College), a Catholic boarding school run by the 
Jesuit order, at home in Bray for the Christmas 
holidays, and back again at school.
Stephen's years at Clongowes correspond with Joyce's 
own stay there between the ages of six and nine. Stephen 
is probably six in the opening Clongowes episode. Joyce 
bares a cross section of the little boy's mind as it darts 
back and forth between memories of home and his first 
school experiences. -
FIRST SCHOOL EXPERIENCE
From Stephen's earliest memories in the prelude, the 
story shifts abruptly to a schoolyard at Clongowes. Boys 
are in the midst of a rough-and-tumble ball game. 
Stephen is afraid and only pretends to be playing, just to 
keep out of trouble. He is clearly not one of the boys; he 
feels small, weak, and inadequate. The words "small" 
and "weak" are sprinkled throughout this section.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: As you look back on this section, note how Joyce 
consistently uses repeated details of color, lightness and 
darkness, sounds, and other sense impressions to convey 
Stephen's frame of mind. Images like wetness, coldness, 
and whiteness provide the links that connect fragments of 
his memory. In the bleak playground scene, the colors 
convey coldness; the light is gray, Stephen's suit is gray, 
his cold hands are blue. When he is feeling ill, the word 
"white" is repeated frequently to suggest both a hospital 
environment and Stephen's pale, youthful virtue, or 
purity. As you read, try to find other sensory words that 
Joyce uses to convey emotional messages.

THE CHRISTMAS DINNER
Joyce's portrayal of a Christmas dinner ruined by an 
argument is one of the most famous scenes in Portrait of 
the Artist. Because Joyce uses the dinner primarily to 
reveal the characters and issues that surround his hero, 
it's one of the few scenes in the book whose action isn't 
fully filtered through Stephen's consciousness. Instead, 
it's presented to you directly, as it would be in a more 
conventional novel or in a play. As a result, the scene has 
great dramatic tension. It's also very funny- Joyce shows 
you the bitterness that can divide a household, but he also 
shows you the humor contained in that bitterness, as 
adults behave like children throwing tantrums over their 
political differences.
The dinner episode marks the beginning of Stephen's 
loss of faith in religion, because the Church seems 
responsible for destroying the great political hero, 
Parnell. It's also a compact summary, in dramatic terms, 
of the political turmoil that divided many Irish families 
after Parnell's disgrace and death.
The bright Christmas setting of the Dedalus living 
room is in abrupt contrast to Stephen's gloomy school 
experiences. It's the first time Stephen is old enough to 
join the grownups at the Christmas table. You'll see that 
this dinner is a turning point for the little boy in more 
ways than one.
NOTE: This is the last time Stephen's family is portrayed 
as well off. Like Joyce's own family, the Dedalus clan is 
in for hard times. Tonight there is turkey and ham and a 
"big plum pudding." By the final chapter, Stephen is 
drinking watery tea and dipping crusts of fried bread into 
"yellow drippings" of fat usually from cooked bacon or 
pork.
The conversation around the table soon turns into an 
unpleasant political argument between Dante and a 
family friend, Mr. John Casey. Simon Dedalus, Stephen's 
father, joins in. The quarrel centers on Charles Stewart 
Parnell, whose funeral had entered Stephen's dream in 
the previous section. Parnell had been denounced by the 
Catholic Church because of his long-time affair with the 
married Kitty O'Shea. The scandal led to his fall from 
political power and perhaps contributed to his death. 
With him fell Ireland's chances for obtaining Home Rule. 
-
NOTE: As you observe this bitter argument, ask yourself 
which side you think Stephen supports. You'll be told in 
the next chapter. Joyce himself was strongly pro-Parnell 
as a boy. When he was nine years old, he wrote a poem 
attacking one of his hero's foes.
John Casey and Simon Dedalus condemn the Church 
for attacking Parnell. They insist the Church should not 
"preach politics from the altar." But Dante has deserted 
her former hero to side with her faith. "God and religion 
before everything!" she cries. She prophesies that 
Stephen will long remember this bitter attack against 
religion in his own home. Mr. Dedalus retorts that what 
the boy will remember is the guilt of the priests who 
drove Parnell to his grave. As you'll see, both prophecies 
will be fulfilled.
The heat of the argument terrifies Stephen. It has 
brought out startling flaws in the adults he admired. The 
smiling Casey is capable of rage, and can do something 
as crude as spit tobacco juice into the eyes of an old 
woman. Stephen's father becomes coarse and bestial in 
his language, and the usually restrained Dante loses 
control and almost spits in Casey's face. As a result, 
Stephen's sense of insecurity deepens. The quarrel has 
given him cause to doubt his family circle, the Church, 
and a country that turns against its hero for 
incomprehensible reasons.
Some readers point out that the Christmas dinner 
scene is a good example of what Joyce called an 
epiphany- a special, sudden moment of truth. Although 
the dinner argument focuses on politics, its meaning for 
Stephen is much deeper. It causes him to doubt the 
institutions and people he has been told to believe in. 
Those doubts will grow.
NOTE: The motif of eyes and blindness is woven through 
this scene as it was earlier. The old woman who shouts 
that she is blinded is one example. Can you find others in 
this sequence? Being blind is of course a symbol for not 
understanding the world or oneself clearly; in Portrait of 
the Artist, blindness or the threat of it usually comes as a 
punishment.
Joyce's poor eyesight was always on his mind. It 
plagued him early in life and steadily deteriorated. He 
was nearly blind in his mature years in spite of a series of 
operations. His faulty vision may have contributed to his 
strong musical sensitivity and keen ear for the sounds of 
language. Joyce studied languages at university, and also 
taught himself (and others).

[The Pandybat Scene*..]
Added to Stephen's physical pain is the humiliation of 
having to kneel in the middle of the classroom. But most 
dreadful of all, as you know if you have ever been 
unjustly punished, is realizing that life often is unjust. 
The phrase that occurs throughout this section is "cruel 
and unfair."
In view of the fact that he had been excused from 
writing, Stephen particularly resents Father Arnall's 
lukewarm defense. Even priests can be cruel and unfair. 
Again, Stephen's faith in the authority of his elders is 
shaken as it was at the Christmas dinner. His 
disappointment with the priests (false fathers) in his 
educational environment will be no less than his 
disappointment with his own father.
[Chapter 2]
At a party where Stephen feels more than ever an 
outsider, the come-hither glance of a young girl attracts 
him. The pair take the last tram (streetcar) home 
together. Stephen feels that the girl, referred to as E. C., 
is inviting a kiss, but he lets the opportunity pass. Later, 
devoured by regret, he tries to pour out his feelings in a 
poem where he does kiss her. The budding poet finds it 
easier to write than to act; you'll see the same pattern in 
Chapter Five, when Stephen writes another poem, a 
villanelle. (Notice, too, that he's already made one 
attempt at writing a poem, in praise of Parnell. Now you 
know whom he supported in the argument at Christmas 
dinner.)
NOTE: STEPHEN'S WOMEN The girl Stephen rides 
with on the streetcar is a dimly seen figure whom Joyce 
describes only by the expression in her eyes. In Stephen 
Hero, she was more fully drawn. There she was called 
Emma Clery. Here she is merely called Emma or E. C.

[Chapter 5]  UNIVERSITY STUDENT
The exalted youth flying high at the end of the last 
chapter is now down to earth in the usual transitional 
pattern of rise and fall from one chapter to the next. In 
his shabby, untidy house, he is breakfasting on a meager 
meal of watery tea and crusts of fried bread, a sharp 
contrast to the festive Christmas meal of the first 
chapter. He is still under his parents' wings. His mother 
grumbles as she washes his neck. His father whistles for 
him and curses him. As Stephen, resentful, walks to the 
university through littered streets, he is clearly ready to 
fly away on his own. Have you had days in which family 
life seems unbearable, as it does to Stephen? Dublin and 
his family are offending "the pride of his youth."

 TESTS_AND_ANSWERS
TEST 1 -
_____ 1. The Christmas dinner scene shows Stephen that 
-
 A. life is cruel and unfair
 B. Dante sides with the Church against Parnell
 C. Parnell was a wicked man -

TEST 2 -
_____ 1. As a schoolboy, Stephen is puzzled by -
 I. where the universe ends
 II. who his father is
 III. what politics mean -
 A. I only
 B. I and II only
 C. I, II, and III -
_____ 2. Stephen pours his emotions into a poem after 
the -
 I. Christmas dinner
 II. tram ride with E. C.
 III. trip to Cork with his father -
 A. I and II only
 B. II and III only
 C. I, II, and III -

ANSWERS -
TEST 1 -
1. B 2. A 3. B 4. C 5. C 6. B 7. B
8. B 9. A 10. C -
11. Joyce has been described as an introspective man 
who had flashes of gaiety and humor. He could always 
see the droll side of a serious situation.
The story of Stephen's painful development as an 
artist also has comic moments. It is enlivened from the 
first chapter to the last with humorous character sketches 
and dialogues. Even situations that are distressing to 
Stephen have their comic aspects. The Christmas 
dinner scene has moments of lusty laughter between Mr. 
Casey and Mr. Dedalus as they mock churchmen and 
goad Mrs. Riordan. In contrast to Stephen's gloomy 
mood during the trip to Cork, his father trades stories 
and boasts with his cronies in grand Irish style.

12. Stephen is profoundly attached to his mother until 
she objects to his attending the university. Early glimpses 
of his "nice mother" of the prelude are of a gentle, 
peacemaking woman. This is her chief role in the 
Christmas dinner scene. You know how attached 
Stephen is to her by his fusion of the mother figure with 
the Blessed Virgin and with his romanticized ideal 
women. Davin's peasant woman in Chapter Five is a 
motherly figure (probably pregnant). Even the first 
prostitute to whom he yields has a motherly aura





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