Ladies Man

Throughout the novel we encounter an account of the influential years of Stephen Dedalus. Stephen’s experiences with religion and school contribute to his growth as an artist, beginning with his struggles as a young child and on to his adolescence in university. Crucial to those experiences is his interaction with women. The women, as the story progresses, prove to be a driving force behind Stephen’s art. Stephen is conflicted about his own views of women and suffers great guilt. Throughout his life, the types of women who influence him change. Each woman represents a new stage of Stephens’s life and a step forward in his journey to finding himself.

Stephen's early years revolve around his crush on Emma. Although Stephen does not know her very well, he believes she is the girl of his dreams and thinks of her as a goddess. He compares Emma to the fictional character in Count of Monte Cristo, Mercedes. In Stephens’s eyes Mercedes is the ideal woman. He has created a whole persona of a real-life Mercedes and dreams of finding her. As a child, Emma is his Mercedes, keeping her mysterious, writing her love letters and fantasizing about her constantly. This infatuation with a fictional character marks the beginning for his search of the woman who will transform him into an artist.

The figure of the prostitute begins with Stephen's first sexual encounter. From childhood he has heard of women like that, but never actually encountered one. Stephen is unable to grasp the concept of the prostitute until he himself reaches the age where he meets one and subsequently loses his virginity to her. His longing to find this ideal woman is confused with his sexual desires, leading him to the whores. The prostitute is a symbol for the stage in his life that “His childhood was dead”. It was at the point when he lost his virginity that his innocence went with it. It is after this loss that Stephen begins his moral decline and dalliance in a life of sin.

Once the guilt is too much to bear Stephen finds himself in church and is awed by a portrait of the Virgin Mary. His sinful past has not brought out his transformation into an artist nor has he found the woman who he believes is meant to bring about this transformation in him. Therefore, he looks to the Virgin Mary as a key to his redemption. She becomes the next woman Stephen romanticizes as he veers his life into a more religious direction in hopes of finding clarity.

Stephen’s extreme regard toward women is direct result of his Catholic upbringing. The idealization of women to extremes, - Virgin Mary- or the complete denigration of women- prostitutes. He struggles with religion throughout his life trying to find the right balance. It is not until he has experiences both spectrums that he is able to clearly see what he’s been looking for all along. When his peers mock his name in Greek, Stephen begins to think about the meaning behind the Greek name and wonders about his true purpose. This brings about his epiphany; it is in this moment that he is truly able to see clearly. He envisions a beautiful girl wading in the water and reacts in a completely different manner. This insight is the accomplishment of his balanced view. He no longer sees the idealized and romanticized version of women but is able to picture himself with an ordinary woman; Emma.