How are women represented in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man?

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce describes the variety of views about women Stephen Dedalus subscribes to as he matures personally, religiously and artistically.

In his early life, Stephen sees women through the lens of the madonna-whore dichotomy. A woman was either a nurturing mother or a siren, luring men to sin. His mother fulfilled the typical madonna archetype. She is quiet and domestic, fulfilling her housewife role and maternal duties without a voice. The other maternal figure in his life, his governess Dante, attempts to break free of the female stereotype by arguing with Stephen’s father over the Irish revolutionary Parnell at Christmas dinner. In the heat of the moment, Dante

…shoved her chair violently aside and left the table...At the door Dante turned around violently and shouted down the room, her cheeks flushed and quivering with rage...The door slammed behind her…

Her attempt to stand up for her views is met with Mr. Dedalus’ scornful laughter, making her look ridiculous rather than opinionated. Madonnas must remain subservient.

The flip side of the dichotomy is seen when Stephen’s teenage lust leads him to frequent prostitutes.

After early nightfall the yellow lamps would light up, here and there, the squalid quarter of the brothels. He would follow a devious course up and down the streets, circling always nearer and nearer in a tremor of fear and joy, until his feet led him suddenly round a dark corner. The whores would be just coming out of their houses... He would pass by them calmly waiting for a sudden movement of his own will or a sudden call to his sin-loving soul from their soft perfumed flesh.

The other image of women Stephen understands is the temptress. But the guilt of his lifestyle weighs heavily on Stephen, becoming a crushing burden while he listens to a sermon one day.

Every word of it was for him. Against his sin, foul and secret, the whole wrath of God was aimed. The preacher’s knife had probed deeply into his disclosed conscience and he felt now that his soul was festering in sin... Like a beast in its lair his soul had lain down in its own filth but the blasts of the angel’s trumpet had driven him forth from the darkness of sin into the light.

Stephen is now driven to confess his sins and renounce the prostitutes, even to the point of considering entering the priesthood – the ultimate renunciation of tempting females. But it is the image of a woman that leads Stephen to his true calling. While walking by the sea, he spies a young woman bathing, and this vision sets him on the path he will pursue.

A girl stood before him in midstream… Her thighs, fuller and softhued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the white fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down… Her bosom was as a bird’s, soft and slight…

She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness…

Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life!

This girl was neither madonna nor whore, but a mixture of sensuality and innocence. She becomes the muse that shows him that his destiny is to create art out of what he sees. He must become a writer.

Joyce's Portrait has a very unique perspective on women through its protagonist, Stephen Dedalus. In the first chapter, there are only two women encountered in a significant way. These are his mother and Dante, a friend of the family. Dante had been a nun and Stephen's mother is a catholic. From Stephen's point of view, at his young and fragile age, these two women can be compared to the Virgin Mary for the sake of this discussion.

Joyce also describes a character by the name of Eileen Vance who lives next door to him and is Protestant. The second page of the novel finds Stephen hiding under the table because he has said that he would marry Eileen. Because she is Protestant and Stephen is Catholic, Dante threatens that if he does not apologize, "the eagles will come and pull out his eyes." This sets up Eileen as forbidden.

Eileen's forbidden nature relates to the prostitute that Stephen visits at the end of chapter two. At that point, we see Stephen has very extreme representations of women to work with. On one side is the Virgin Mary and on the other is prostitute. The ambiguous E.C. character falls at whichever end of the pendulum Stephen has found himself at that particular moment. When he fantasizes about her, she is likened to a prostitute. When he reveres her, comparing her to the "ivory tower," she can be compared to the Virgin Mary.

It's not until the end of chapter four when the extremes settle down and he can see a girl for what she is, a girl that doesn't have to be an extreme representation of women. He still thinks of her in a "worshipful" manner, but he is inspired by her. That's the difference that he sees and that is how he is able to overcome the extremes.

In A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, as in many of Joyce's other works, the idea of the "woman as a mother" is subtly interwoven into the text.  Namely, Stephen Dedalus's own mother is a character based on James Joyce's own mother, and though she isn't a major character in the novel, she is a constant presence in Stephen's mind.  Early in the novel, Stephen recalls being dropped off at the Clongowes Wood Academy--an act which caused his mother some heartache.  Stephen, even as a child, seemed sensitive to his mother's upset.  Later in his life, when a peer questions Stephen about his mother's happiness, he is unable to respond, which suggests a sort of distance he feels between his mother.

Again, while Mrs. Dedalus is not a major charater in this novel, Joyce seems to be developing Stephen's relationship with his mother to set the stage for his next novel, Ulysses. As the action of Ulysses opens, Stephen's mother has just passed away, and he is riddled with feelings of guilt regarding her death and their relationship for the rest of the novel.

What is the significance of women in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man?

The main female character in this important novel is that of Emma, who only seems to appear as part of fragments of Stephen's earliest childhood memories. He certainly is never able to connect with her as a real individual, and in the novel it is clear that she turns into a symbol of a love that is based on purity rather than the confusing sexual desires that Stephen comes to experience as he matures. The way in which Stephen pedestals Emma as a paragon of purity is demonstrated when he links her in his imagination with religion. Remember that when he passes through his stage where he ascribes to a strict religious practice, he associates being together with Emma in heaven as his reward for the earthly sacrifices that he makes in this plane.

Interestingly, it is when he reaches university that he has his first proper conversation with Emma. The diary record of this meeting shows that Emma is actually rather normal and very different from the divine figure that Stephen had made out of her before. This symbolises the way in which Stephen as a character has moved away from religious extremes of sin and purity and is now adopting something of a third way and happy medium between the two ends of the spectrum. Women therefore are used to indicate the kind of development that Stephen as a character undergoes.