Perhaps the hardest thing for a teenager to do is not what there parents don't want them to do, but refusing to do what their parents want them to do. So we see Stephen at the end of Chapter four. He has rejected the director's offer to join the Order of the Jesuits, and instead has decided to attend university. Most of us probably applauded him when we read this scene, for not allowing other's expectation to push him away from what we ultimately assume will be his profession: art. I was certainly one of those people cheering him on, I could see that he'd matured beyond trying to be the one everyone looks up to and says "That Stephen Dedalus, I wish I could be more like him." So far it seems to work out great for him, in the end of the chapter Stephen finally feels an emotion for another human being. At the start of Chapter five he has friends at school, and while he seems to not be loving taking his classes he does seem content where he is.
Yet looking back at his family's reaction to his decision not to join the Order, it doesn't seem like such a good one. When he come's home from being summoned by the director to see all of his little siblings alone in the house with dregs of tea, it is because his parents are "Goneboro toboro lookboro atboro aboro houseboro" (177). Later his sister tells him it's because the landlord is kicking them out, and Stephen sees how "Even before they set out on life's journey they seemed weary already of the way" (177). Clearly his family has continued to fall on harder and harder times financially, but Mr. Dedalus keeps Stephen in a very nice Jesuit school. Stephen's siblings will never be able to get the level of education he got which they all seem to accept, but most of his family don't seem to think he's using that education in the best way. His mother really doesn't like the idea, with Stephen picking up that "Yes, his mother was hostile to the idea, as he had read from her listless tone" (178). Though maybe Stephen's decision to go to university will lead to more money further in his life, it seems that for his family the honor they would've had, had Stephen decided to join the Order, would've made all the sacrifices the family made for him worth it-and somehow by him refusing-he has to some degree rejected all that his family has done for him. I still believe Stephen made the right decision for him personally, but I guess I no longer think he would have been making solely a selfish decision by choosing to join the Order.
The university certainly *could* lead to Stephen being in a financial position to help his family (although we never hear of any such expectation on their part--which doesn't mean it doesn't exist; only that Stephen doesn't register it). But he's clearly not interested in any lucrative course of study (unlike Lynch, who just wants a good job when he gets out). Stephen seems resigned to a life of poverty--even proud of it (it fits the martyr idea)--in chapter 5. As we've noted, his idea of what it is to be an artist is rather "priestlike" in many ways. I'm actually not sure whether joining the priesthood would have put him in a position to help his family financially. He would have been provided for, but I don't know that priests in Ireland made much of a salary at the time.
ReplyDeleteHis mother likely wants him to become a priest for other reasons. She wouldn't be the only Irish Catholic mother in Dublin at the time with such ambitions for her first-born son.