Stephen the Lover

The love life of Stephen Dedalus throughout the novel is an uncharacteristic one, certainly by our modern day expectations of love and sexual relationships. Stephen from a very early age develops certain parts of his more intimate emotions much more quickly than others -- that is to say some of his emotions develop to levels considered possibly more advanced, whereas others seem to advance at a much more slower rate. For instance Stephen's sexual desire and experience throughout the novel manifests itself very early on, and immediately is at a much higher level than is expected for a boy of Stephen's age. To put it bluntly Stephen engages in his first sexual act somewhere around the age of thirteen and it isn't a one time thing. Apart from Stephen's physical lust we see much less of a quickened maturing concerning his actual development of emotional relationships as part of love. Stephen certainly doesn't seem as matured throughout the novel concerning how he develops his love interests as he does concerning how much he acts upon his sexual desires. In regards to this relating back to Stephen as a character in the novel it seems to me that this fits into the idea that Stephen is much more comfortable living in the fantasy of an idea as opposed to dealing with the difficulty of the reality.

For Stephen the idea of sexual activity becomes very much an embodiment with his obsession with sin as part of his fantasy. Stephen likes to imagine himself as being part of these dark  brooding fantasies where we the reader, someone who is inside Stephen's head at all times, can simultaneously see how Stephen pictures himself, but we can also see the reality of what is actually going on. Perhaps it's not at all surprising to see the main character in this novel doing this though -- a way to view art would be to see it is as taking something very mundane and blowing it up into something very dramatic. The way this manifests itself with his sexual activity is related to how it ties in to his obsession with sin. Stephen loves to think of himself as one bad dude.

For instance at the beginning of chapter three visits to the brothels have become a very regular thing for Stephen. He doesn't picture it as the serene magical event that he originally pictured it as -- another instance in which he turns mundane reality into art-- but instead he seems to have developed a certain regularity to his visits. He has a method and a routine; "He would pass by them calmly waiting for a sudden movement of his own will or a sudden call to his sinloving soul from their soft perfumed flesh" (109). Stephen does not think of it as "I'm gonna go to the brothel and pay someone to have sex with me". He has to think of himself as much more dark than that -- as he puts it he's "sinloving" and they have "soft-perfumed skin". As far as Stephen is concerned he's a bad ass sinner and he's going off to have intimate experiences with these seemingly magical women. He doesn't want to see himself as having sex with someone he pays for it, he's much safer in his fantasy of him as the experienced and darkened sinner.

Later in the novel this same sort of thing manifests itself with the performance he puts on for his one true love, Emma. Even late in the novel when he's attending university Stephen still doesn't seem to be able to form a healthy relationship with this girl he's been in love with for almost a decade. From very early on Stephen proves that he doesn't want to have a functioning relationship with her, at least not one that she knows about.  In his very first reaction with her Stephen feels anxiety about whether or not he should make a move on her. That early in the book I'm certainly sympathetic to him, many 13 year old males have this same kind of apprehension. At that point instead of actually trying to make something happen with her, he goes home and writes a poem about what he dreams it would have been like to kiss and be united with her. What we see, however, is that this continues throughout the duration of the novel. Stephen, bluntly put, would rather live in a fantasy world where he writes poetry about he and she kissing than actually make any effort to see it come in to reality. This is an idea we see recurring throughout the novel, not just in Stephen's love life. Stephen wants to make his life art in the form of fantasy, rather than actually live in his reality.