A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man Essay

Through his portrait of Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce suggests that being an artist is difficult because one must rebel against societal standards, values and ideals. This includes the rejection of religion, politics, and sexual morality among many others. In To the Lighthouse, Woolf agrees with Joyce that there are certain values and morals that the artist figure must reject, however, Woolf shows that female artists have more obstacles to overcome, mainly gender roles and sexism, in order to create art. Woolf 's novel shows that the struggle is harder for female artists because of the criticism they face from men through the characters of Lily, a painter, and Mrs. Ramsay, a housewife, and how the novel showcases their struggles and success compared to the novel’s male figures. Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man closely follows the life of Stephen Dedalus from childhood to young adulthood. Throughout the course of the novel, Stephen Dedalus battles with coming to terms with his nationality, his morality, and his religion amongst many others. Ultimately, he decides to reject all of the values and ideals imposed by society in order to become an artist. R.B Kershner explores this concept of rejection of societal norms in The Twentieth-Century Novel. He states that modernist art “began as a series of ceaseless avant-garde experiments that constituted an attack on tradition and in some ways on art itself,” (Kershner 45)…