Stephen vs Catholicism, parents, and the like
1/18/19
As I was reading chapter 1, Stephen’s upbringing and elementary education felt very familiar to me. I too attended a Catholic elementary school, although mine was not a boarding school, all-boys, or located in Dublin in the late 1800s. Nonetheless, both his constant obedience to the strict priests/nuns/rectors within the school and his notion of keeping his parents’ values resonated a lot with my own grade school years.
In the beginning section of chapter 1, Stephen makes decisions pretty much solely based on lessons learned from people of authority in his life - the priests and his parents, specifically. We see him kneeling beside his bed even when he is extremely sick from being thrown into the square ditch, “his shoulders shaking as he murmured” prayers that have been ingrained into his head from repeating them on a daily basis. “His memory knew the responses” to the prefect’s prayer in the chapel, and he also follows his father’s pious virtue (to “never to peach on a fellow”) when Wells begs him for forgiveness. This section simply reminded me that, as an 8 year old, you don’t know much other than to cling to the limited amount of information you have at that age, whether it’s your parent’s tips, a priest’s rules, and the traditions/values that the institution you attend instills in you.
As Stephen grows up, however, we are introduced to his newfound, internal doubt towards both Catholicism and his father’s philosophies. Walking around the streets with his father as he rambles on and on, Stephen starts to disagree with his father’s perspectives, silently starting to believe that his own mind is “older than theirs”, referring to the minds of Mr. Dedalus and his cronies. At age 15ish, he finds himself discovering new things about the world he occupies and finding what he believes rather than what he’s been taught. He starts to stray away from the piousness that he was forced to uphold at Clongowes, which somewhat resonates with how I felt when I left Catholic school at around that same age and was exposed to new ideas, which absolutely made me realize what I really believed rather than what I’ve simply been instructed to think. It was interesting to see him switch back and forth between customs he knew so well (praying before bed, writing the religious header on the top of his poem) and completely straying away from what he’s learned were sinful (doubting his father’s thoughts on religion — although this is against the 4th commandment —, lust). My own tween self related to his exploration outside of his religious realm (definitely not the prostitution part okay like just in general not being like handcuffed to the Bible, you get it) as he discovered new things in the world of mixed gendered society and, frankly, older age. I hope we get to follow his journey in spirituality, as I have a slight inkling of a feeling that he won’t turn out to be the pious martyr that he envisioned himself to be.
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I also related to Stephen's pulling away from authority, though not in a religious way since I'm not religious. I remember how I always took my parents' words on how to do life, following their rules and thinking they were always right. Somewhere between then and now, I realized that they're not always right, and that I do sometimes have differing thoughts to them, and that notion both empowered my and terrified me, that I was starting to form my own thoughts and maybe they weren't right, and maybe I was doing everything all wrong. I don't sense that kind of hesitation in Stephen as much, but his breaking away from authority seems to be a little less intense than he thinks, as he still relies on the priests to tell him he's absolved of sin, follows their orders, and still goes along with his father on their outing to his old college.
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