Notes

Prompt
In the following excerpt from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus’s conflicting devotion to the Virgin Mary and his obsession with prostitutes is revealed through his thoughts. Write an essay in which you analyze the narrative techniques and other resources of language Joyce uses to convey Stephen’s relationship with women.

Passage
Pg 112-113

On the wall of his bedroom hung an illuminated scroll,
the certificate of his prefecture in the college of the
sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary. On Saturday
mornings when the sodality met in the chapel to recite
the little office his place was a cushioned kneeling-desk
at the right of the altar from which he led his wing of
boys through .the responses. The falsehood of his posi-
tion did not pain him. If at moments he felt an impulse
to rise from his post of honour and, confessing before
them all his unworthiness, to leave the chapel, a glance
at their faces restrained him. The imagery of the
psalms of prophecy soothed his barren pride. The
glories of Mary held his soul captive: spikenard and
myrrh and frankincense, symbolising her royal lineage,
her emblems, the late-flowering plant and late-blossom-
ing tree, symbolising the agelong gradual growth of her
cultus among men. When it fell to him to read the
lesson towards the close of the office he read it in a
veiled voice, lulling his conscience to its music.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

His sin, which had covered him from the sight of God,
had led him nearer to the refuge of sinners. Her eyes
seemed to regard him with mild pity; her holiness, a
strange light glowing faintly upon her frail flesh, did
not humiliate the sinner who approached her. If ever he
was impelled to cast sin from him and to repent, the
impulse that moved him was the wish to be her knight.
If ever his soul, re-entering her dwelling shyly after the
frenzy of his body's lust had spent itself, was turned
towards her whose emblem is the morning star, ** bright
and musical, telling of heaven and infusing peace,'' it
was when her names were murmured softly by lips
whereon there still lingered foul and shameful words,
the savour itself of a lewd kiss.