Portrait of an Artist - The Role of Women in Stephen Dedalus' Creative Process

James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man presents an account of the formative years of aspiring author Stephen Dedalus. The very title of the novel suggests that Joyce's focus throughout will be those aspects of the young man's life that are key to his artistic development, and it allows one to consider each event in Stephen's life -- from the opening story of the moocow to his experiences with religion and …

…inspiration, and finally to one in which he internalizes completely their role as mediators between experience and art. Once he realizes that they are deliverers of an inspiration that is born from his own experience, he consigns their function to his own imagination, thus abandoning the need for an external intermediary, while at the same time embracing -- and accepting as a part of himself -- the centrally feminine aspect of the process of creation.