Identity and Dissent in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Youngman and D. H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow

Abstract

The last decades of the nineteenth century were a culmination of years of social, political, and economic change in Europe and in the United Kingdom. These changes occasioned a cultural revolution that will see the rapid dissolution of the organic fabric of the British society and elicit questions about the very morality that was the foundation of English society. D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce chronicled these social and moral tensions in The Rainbow and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. This paper interrogates the nexus between identity and dissent in the protagonists’ attempts to navigate their moral world. It equally seeks to understand the moral compass of religion, country, and family in the assertion of individual identity and how these define the cultural collective consciousness of the era in which they were produced and the birth of alternative truths. Keywords— Identity, dissent, morality, collective consciousness. Identity and dissent are the hallmarks of Modern English Literature. They are not simply the results of major historical, scientific and philosophical developments of the period, but the result of a gradual process of change occasioned by the desire to create new existential paradigms.The major conflicts of the twentieth century with their attendant consequences required new inquiry into human society and humankind’s relationship to it. Amongst some of the consequences was the geographic reorganization of the world, which created a new sense of identity in some and bitterness in others. It sparked strong feelings of nationalism in erstwhile dominated peoples. It occasioned a 1 Such changes as inventions of the airplane, the television, the radio, the computer, the automobile, antibiotics, the computer, and the internet were to improve on the quality of man’s life but also create additional existential angst. For more informtaion on this see Hans Kohn’s and Wallace Sokolsky’s African Nationalism in the twentieth Century (Princeton,N.J.:Van Nostrand,1965) and Oliver Zimmer’s new psychological map of the world and created a social chasm, the direct result of the experience of war and the consequent inevitable changes. The desire to break away from what was considered at the time as a moribund social set up was symptomatic of an age sick of itself. The young and adventurous thought of the necessity to overthrow a bedeviled traditional and regal European society, build on class and hegemony. Two writers, James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence, stand out in this miasma of doubt and anxiety, representing divergent and convergent views on identity and dissent in the modern English novel. Even though the relationship between Lawrence and Joyce was not very friendly from a personal and literary perspective as Earl Ingersoll argues, they are both modernists all attempting to fathom the nature of human beings and the human society. Ingersoll calls them an Nationalism in Europe, 1890-1940 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Mcamillan,2003) Athanasius A. Ayuk. International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, 6(1)-2021 ISSN: 2456-7620 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.61.19 164 “odd couple” (2) because even though modernist, they were different and treated each other’s work with disdain. Despite this turmoil, one can read their shared concern with the individual character struggling to find purpose. Joyce’s A portrait of the Artist as a Youngman and Lawrence’s The Rainbow reflect two currents of identity and dissent in English Literature. For Joyce, the fundamental concern is that of national identity weaved in the text through Stephen Dedalus’ struggle to come to terms with both himself and his country. And for Ursula Brangwen it plays out in her struggle towards social recognition and the affirmation of her own personal views and values.These two writers,in spite the fact of their being antipodal to each other in many respects, simply forge newparadigm shifts which are both natural and inevitable.They represent the culminating point of years of dissent in painting, sculpture, and literature which helped shaped the cultural landscape of Western Europe, defining on its path, its social and cultural identity. This paper seeks to discuss the dynamics of identity and dissentas symptomatic of existential angst,reflective of the corrosive moral and social consciousness of the time and the inevitability of the collapse of traditional morality and the birth of alternative truths. The paper equally locates the difficulty of closure with regards to Stephen and Ursula to their avid quest for personal truths that should define their identity. Among some of the major concerns in Western thought and especially in European world view have been Man’s relationship to their creator, his sexuality, the meaning of truth and how it defines our existence, the essence of beauty and overall, the meaning of ‘self’. Joyce and Lawrence championed these issues inbothdistinct and convergent ways.They wrote at the time when the quest for new knowledge and the desire to break away from the past was at its apex. It was a period of desire and urgency, new inventions in nearly all fields of life. Political convulsions in Europe created anguish and fear and caused the gradual 3 She is the most representative of the Lawrence’s characters in terms of social dissent Innovations or dissent against existing norms were brought to bear on; painting, sculpture and literature through amongst others the works of: PabloPicasso,Henri Matisse,George Grosz,Aime-Jules Dalou, Charles-Henri Joseph Cordier, Elie Wiesel,Rainer Maria Rilke,Franz Kafka etc. These convulsions included among others the development of political liberalism; the struggle by Great Powers to assert global influence; the agitation of new nations that finally led to the first and second world wars. For more of this see J.A.S Grenville’s A disintegration of Europe’s social structure. There was a renewed sense of cultural identity by a new generation of young people who sought to define themselves against the backdrop of their parent’s generation. Put differently, there was an inevitable generational conflict that would eventually find its way into music, painting, and literature mimicking the realities of life at that time. In the political sphere, the surge of national pride and the desire for religious and racial supremacy and the battle for sexual equality all occasioned a new sense of self and imposed a new grammar of understanding of human thought and desire. It exacerbated the immanent political, social, and cultural tensions which were at the crossroads of a new global configuration. Joyce and Lawrence were (even though at some convenient difference) at the forefront of this far leftistmovement of self-propulsion, of a complete annihilation of culturally obfuscating values that were both retrogressive and obnoxious. It is worthy therefore to understand the relevance of A Portrait and The Rainbow in the present discussion because they reflect the reality of their time, but perhaps more because they introduced into the cultural history of the United Kingdom the contested fabric of identity and dissent in the English society. If the question of identity and cultural self-praise was the new paradigm of twentieth century Europe, it hascontinued to animate western thinking and pride today. Postwar Europewoke up to the realization of the cruelty of human actions, but perhaps also to the shocking awareness of the apparent inaptitude of the Godhead to respond to immediate human suffering. This was not simply the result of a sudden realization. It was the product of a culmination of accumulated frustration resulting from the weariness with Edwardian and Georgianvalues. Joyce’s and Lawrence’s works epitomize this apprehension and put them on the pedestal of twentieth and twenty first century cultural pyramid. Albeit sometimes in different ways, Joyce and Lawrence contested some centuries old social and cultural values. For Joyce, it was Roman Catholicism and for Lawrence it was the immateriality of Christianity and its inability to resolve Man’s inevitable inner conflicts. The underlying moral fabric of Western existence is anomnipotent, Omni present and benevolent God. Prewar and postwar circumstances created the conditions for History of the World:From the 20 to the 21 century (London: Routledge,2005) Assaults on religion created doubts about and killed enthusiasm towards the divine presence. The works of researchers such as Charles Darwin’sOnthe Origins of Species (Signet Classics,2003) Athanasius A. Ayuk. International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, 6(1)-2021 ISSN: 2456-7620 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.61.19 165 Europe to contest this vision and to call into question the ability of a saving God. It created the condition of doubt and exacerbated Western anguish. This theme has been the subject of a great literary tradition beginning with George Eliot and intensifying with Joyce and Lawrence and continuing with Graham Greene, T.S. Eliot, and Samuel Beckett. Stephen Daedalus and Ursula Brangwen represent each in their own way, a disavowal of the traditions and mores of the social systems of thought that have held sway for centuries. The fundamental rhetoric of Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait rests on his view that belief is fundamental to faith and happiness; with belief gone, the very essence of hope evaporates. This is sacrosanct to and characteristic of western Christian thought and survival. The most difficult thing for Stephen is his inability to believe without questioning and to have faith in a religion that has betrayed Ireland’s greatest symbol of freedom. His childhood is jostled by intense political and religious conflict, acute poverty and the psychological trauma caused by Parnell’s death, and perhaps most especially, the Church’s inability to save him. That sense of betrayal will not only haunt Stephen for an exceedingly long time but will define