Okay, so Stephen is growing up pretty fast. He's doing a lot of things that I think most of us can say are objectively not great. He's also got some pretty unsavory thoughts about other people. What I started thinking about was how much is Stephen to blame for all of these things that he thinks and does? How much is he to blame for his own mental state?
For example, in class today Emma brought up how ironic it is that because of the Catholic church, Stephen is pushed to have sex with prostitutes, which I agree with, at least partly. I agree that the Catholic church and the way they taught Stephen about sex (hint: not at all) is one of the pushing factors that sent Stephen spiraling into sin. However, I also wonder what other factors there are to his straying. Specifically, I'm curious as to how much Stephen himself is to blame for wandering into the brothels all the time. If we're to take Stephen's word completely seriously, we could be tempted to say he's not responsible at all, and it was simply human sin that drew him into the neighborhood - fate led him there, lust kept him there. But I think most of us don't take Stephen's word for how everything went down, and that complicates things, because we don't have a purely objective point of view of what happened. So how do we split the blame for Stephen's actions? 75-25, 75 for Stephen? 50-50? 32-68?
On a very related note, we briefly talked about Stephen's objectification of women. We talked about how he has the whore-virgin binary in his mind whenever he's encountered a woman so far. He also seems to only think of women in terms of what they can do for him. Hopefully we can all agree that this is not a good mentality to have. So I ask the same question about his objectification of women: how much is he to blame for his thoughts? Here are the other contenders for blame: the time period, his upbringing away from women, the church, and probably more. The first's reasons are probably obvious - in the time when Joyce is writing and when Stephen is living, it was the norm to objectify women and all that good stuff. His upbringing away from women probably only accentuate that. If he never had the chance to interact with girls until he grew up quite a bit, he wouldn't know how to treat them like normal human beings. So when he gets to interact with girls in his early teen years, it's like an exotic meeting with another species. The church has taught him the whore-virgin dynamic, at least as far as my limited knowledge of the Bible (please correct me if I'm wrong, I don't mean to offend) portrays women either as pious beings of God who can do no wrong or beings of sin. Again, I don't know all that much about Christianity, so if this isn't believable to you, feel free to scratch that off the list and slap me with a rosary or something. Anyways, Stephen has all of these factors in his life that need to be taken into account when thinking about his outlook on women. So where does Stephen himself fit into this mix of factors to blame? I honestly don't have an answer. Again, I don't think Stephen deserves 0% or 100% of the blame, but I have no idea where in between that he does deserve the blame.
In general, this has brought me back to The Stranger from last semester, which brought up the question of judgement and how much we can truly judge each other. And now I'm questioning how much we can truly judge others again and my head is spinning so yeah if you'd like to help a confused little girl comment your thoughts.
Ahh this is really hard and I've been thinking about this a lot because I have no idea. It's sort of a question of how much free will Stephen has. But also it's kind of odd, because as a kid he's more impressionable and doesn't really have a lot of choice over his worldview. But in general it wouldn't be productive to just assume that kids and teens can't choose their perspective and change stuff. But I'm also torn
ReplyDeleteThis post reminds me of the conversations we had in Genetics after we watched "Three Identical Strangers." How much is our behavior attributed to our environment? Genetic makeup? If Stephen was our age and lived in this time period, would he be a raging feminist? Or would he still be drawn to media that objectifies women?
ReplyDeleteThis a really interesting question. I honestly hadn't really thought about this when reading the book because I was so annoyed with they way Stephen was objectifying women. I just pinned all the blame on him. I think it would be interesting to be able to see into the minds of Stephen's peers/the people he goes to Catholic schools with to see if they are having similar thoughts and experiences as Stephen. I feel like that would give us a better picture of how much Stephen is to blame. From what I can see from the book, Stephen's friends do not go and sleep with prostitutes at night but if they do maybe that would show the Catholic church is more to blame?
ReplyDeleteThis is a good point. I wonder what, also, was taught to him by his parents? Like if they had let him sit at the adult table earlier or something would he be able to feel more accountability for his actions? If he'd lived with his parents instead of being sent to boarding school would he still consider himself a lone wolf type? I wonder how much of his life has been impacted by tiny decisions like that.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting dilemma to find exactly how much blame should be put on Stephen. One point in Stephen's favor is that his surroundings have shaped his ideas about women and set him down the path of sin; he is essentially forced into that situation and it's expected for him act that way. Still, it's not as if Stephen was forced at gun point to just wander into a brothel. He did that completely out of his own free will and had the choice to resist his temptations. I do have some sympathy for his misguided views on women since he was clearly miseducated by the church. His decision to enter the brothel though was his own to make and completely his fault.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, I want to stress more blame on Steven. I feel that the church would’ve provided some basic morals to follow. For example, he learned that lust was a sin but still “wandered” to the brothel like Matthew mentioned. In short, while Stephen can’t change the way he was raised, he has power of his own actions: He has to be responsible for them.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting perspective and begs the question if we can really hold characters from different time periods, backgrounds, and ideas to the same moral standards we have today. We are all, after all, products of our own environment. If there is barely the idea that women are people during Stephen's time, and if he was kept separate and away from girls almost his entire adolescence, and if his only representation of women is from dark romantic literature, than is it any wonder he objectifies women the way he does? It is certainly still unpleasant to read about, but if there's barely the opportunity in his life for him to have a different perspective or a different idea about women, can we blame him for merely following the ideas he learned? It's a difficult question and I don't think there really is a right answer.
ReplyDeleteI agree. How much can we truly blame Stephen for his actions? Everybody knows what happens during our pubescent years and the fact that we were taught about while Stephen was not has helped us to not stray down the same path that Stephen did. Just like you said, we also have tot take into account the time period and other factors. When all of this is put together, can you really blame him? We can't just take away all his blame though so there has to be a good balance. There really isn't a right answer on how much Stephen is to blame.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! Blame is a tough subject like all the comments have been saying. Personally I am curious about thoughts versus actions. When exactly do we blame stephen? Like you said the whore-virgin idea is very unhealthy because it affects the way he treats women. We also have to consider that we are in his mind so other people in these scenes could be objectifying or respecting women in their heads and we don't know. I have trouble understanding when he beings thinking something and exactly what is translated into actions because of the nature of Portrait. Thanks for making me think!
ReplyDeleteChristianity definitely does not limit women to "angel" vs. "total whore". But during that time in Stephen's denomination he was probably taught that. I definitely agree that we should not be so hard on Stephen seeing as he hardly has a supportive social circle.
ReplyDeleteI feel like Stephen's actions were also influenced by his background and the time he grew up in. But at the same time, I'm also unsure how much blame we should put on Stephen. I suspect that Stephen was aware of the type of neighborhood he was in when he met the prostitute but Joyce also writes that he "wanders" into that neighborhood. However, I think Stephen realizing the constraints of his culture and rebelling against them might be a step in the right direction that might lead him to have less problematic views about women and an overall healthier lifestyle.
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