On Ulysses: Joyce’s Book of Memory [P2]
Part 2 —
Proteus: Identity and Guilt
The question facing Stephen in “Proteus” is identity and its continuity across time. Explicitly, he asks “What is that word known to all men?” (3.335). Stephen immediately tells the reader that his question is motivated by feelings of depression and loneliness: “I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me” (3.335–6). What Stephen wants are the “strandentwining cables” that connect all people together, the humanistic values that allow for empathy and that he needs to write Ulysses. In other words, Stephen is searching for the soul, the ballast of the individual that remains “yet the same” (10.311) within the fluctuating, protean mind and body.
Judith Butler famously maintained that one’s previous identity does not determine one’s present behavior. Rather, we perform an identity that does not exist prior to the performance (Butler 1990, 171–180). Stephen agrees with Butler in “Scylla and Charybdis,” recognizing that his “Molecules all change” (9.205) yet he maintains “I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under everchanging forms” (9.208–9). Stephen wants to embrace the spontaneous possibilities of the present and future, but he continues to ruminate on the past. I argue that this conflict between the unstable present, the outside world that “you damn well have to see” (9.87), and the unchangeable past, the nightmare from which Stephen is trying to awake, is a major source of guilt and a challenge to Stephen’s quest to find his soul.
The narrative style in “Proteus” develops this tension between reality and Stephen’s memories. Unlike “Telemachus,” this chapter primarily represents Stephen’s interior thoughts, with sparse intrusions by an omniscient narrator, the retrospective voice responsible for building the world of Ulysses. Walking along Sandymount Strand, Stephen is immersed in himself. He muses about Aristotle and Berkeley, makes obscure allusions to Shakespeare, and even thinks in foreign languages like Latin and French. Stephen thus clings to the image of himself as an intellectual, a treasured part of his identity that is increasingly threatened by his lack of artistic productivity. In “Proteus,” Joyce allows Stephen’s soliloquy to overpower his narrator to demonstrate the absurdity of Stephen’s narcissism. It is impossible for Stephen to view the world as it is, his intellectualism becomes a filter and a force field between him and others.
When Stephen sees the midwives, his thoughts immediately move to himself, “Hello! Kinch here” (3.39). When he sees a dog, Stephen assumes that he will be attacked. In “Proteus,” perceptions, sensations, and dialogue, the processes of the present, are buried by ruminations, reflections, and memories, processes of the past. In fact, Stephen’s consciousness is constantly bombarded by recollections of his childhood and adolescence. Among them, Stephen remembers his schooldays at Clongowes (3.324–5), his time in Paris (3.164), and a dream from the night before (3.365). It is therefore surprising that Stephen barely thinks about memories of his mother. After all, would a man in mourning not be constantly reflecting on the life of the recently deceased?
The distinction is that Stephen likes to ruminate over the past, but not the immediate past. More specifically, he avoids introspection about painful subjects. That is, subjects that implicate the stable personal identity that Stephen has built for himself. Stephen does not want to admit that he is a failing artist, that he was not a good son to his mother, that he feels alienated from Catholicism and Ireland, or that he is estranged from his family. Religious, national, and familial history are categorical aspects of identity that Stephen was born into. Stephen wants a continuous personal identity, but he refuses to acknowledge the full breadth of his memories and experiences that formed that identity. Partly, Stephen needs to break away from the heavy intellectualism that protects him from engaging with reality. More importantly, Stephen needs to develop the humanistic values that will enable him to form meaningful relationships with other people.
For Joyce, that value is love. “The big word,” according to Richard Ellmann, is the unconditional positive regard for others that creates open communities (Ellmann, 1984). Stephen must be taught to recognize the simple humanity shared by people, in the same way that Joyce was taught by Italo Svevo, a man who housed Joyce and his wife in Trieste, the inspiration for Mr. Leopold Bloom.
