Silencing Stephen: colonial pathologies in Victorian Dublin - protagonist in author James Joyce's book 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'

Laura Doyle has elucidated the complex interconnectedness of Irish nationalism to both Irish Catholicism and the female virgin. Doyle writes: "The virgin woman, including as embodied in the Catholic Virgin mother Mary, is the figure of national purity - uninfected by an invasive, alien sexuality. She embodies the fantasy of an unadulterated, uncolonized history, the pure birth of a nation" (3). If the Irish virgin collapses into the Catholic Virgin, as Doyle suggests, then O'Shea's adultery is not only traitorous, it is also blasphemous. I would also point out, however, that Irish Catholicism - as well as Madden's definition of Irish character - also inscribes a male virgin: Catholicism reveres as chaste both its Christ and its priests. Again, the two ideologies collapse onto one another. Parnell in this scene is characterized by both sides as a Christ-like figure: In Dante's assessment, Parnell was suited to lead so long as he remained - like Christ - sexually pure and without sin. Once he became a "public sinner," however, Parnell could no longer enact the role of Ireland's savior. Casey and Simon Dedalus see in Parnell the martyred Christ, hated by the Pharisees of his own day; they interpret the priests' denunciation of the Irish leader as Judas-like treachery (In Ulysses, Mr. Power will even suggest that like Christ, Parnell will be resurrected, "that one day he will come again" [Ulysses 6.923-24]). Like O'Shea, Parnell has betrayed not only Ireland's vision of itself as "virgin" and "pure," but he also has blasphemed its ideal of an immaculate God. Parnell's adultery thus fuses treason with desecration, an unforgivable combination of sins that fans the heat of the quarrel at the Dedalus table.

Like his family relationships, Stephen's early school experiences are also encoded with signifiers of colonial self-deception and destruction. Partha Chatterjee has noted that the aim of nationalist movements is not to reject the principles of modern government expounded by their colonizers, but to require the just application of these principles (74). Edward Said, however, takes a more problematic view of native mimicry of colonial hierarchical structures. He argues:

Nationalism was often led by lawyers, doctors, and writers who were partly formed and to some degree produced by the colonial power. The national bourgeoises ... in effect tended to replace the colonial force with a new class-based and ultimately exploitative one, which replicated the old colonial structures in new terms. (223)