Culture vs.

Individual: Discuss Joyce's novel in the conceptual framework provided by

Lionel Trilling's essay "Freud: Within and Beyond Culture."

The dichotomy which pervades Lionel Trillings essay Freud: Within and Beyond
Culture and James Joyces novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man tackles the relation
between culture and the self. As Trilling asserts, culture is the organic unity carefully
assembled of many disparate selves who decline to submit and eventually succumb to
cultures authority. Therefore, the self is perpetually waging an epic battle against culture for
the sole purpose of delivering itself from the omnipotence of culture, simultaneously robbing
it of its cohesion. The substantial role of literature, therefore, as Trilling argues, is not only to
ascertain the truth of the self and about the self, but also to grow awareness of the supreme
authority which the self assumes in its struggle with society. It is precisely this particularity of
the self a biological residue of human quality inapt to yield to the adverse effect of culture
that Joyce so extensively explores in his novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
The implication of the self in society, which is, according to Trilling, inherited thus
inevitable, is presented in the Portrait in form of nets, which under the thick shroud of
metaphor serve to depict family, church and nationalism. This metaphor makes manifest
Stephens impressions of constriction within the confines of social and cultural autonomy
which he must, in order to pursue his artistic vocation, manage to evade, simultaneously
attaining both individual and artistic liberation.
At the beginning of the novel we become familiarized with the notion of how
language, being acquired within the family, becomes the integral part of ones identity,
preordaining, to some extent, Stephens future life. The image of Stephen in his early ages
listening to his fathers storytelling and his later venturing to convey his thoughts and feelings
by associating words one by one, gradually formulates the concept of his reality which will
later determine the bias of his soul and become a mental projection of his inner self
subsequently propelling him into social alienation.
Biological portion of our being deprives us of completely entering culture. In the
Portrait this biological residue of human quality may be interpreted as a gradual process of
self-realization conveyed in the form of epiphanies which, coming at different stages of
Stephens life, make him fully aware of himself and help him define his identity which will
consequently become the place from which the non-conformist character of his will stem.

Stephens process of self-realization is, as already said, gradual since it fuses

numerous epiphanies all assembled from disparate feelings, thoughts and experiences merged
into one meaningful pattern helping him fathom the world. The process is concomitantly
dialectical for it includes, as Trilling muses, mixed emotions pain and enhancement.
Throughout the novel Stephen grows as an individual developing his aesthetic theories and
committing himself to art. However, he inevitably experiences pain while detaching himself
from his family and friends, abandoning the pursuit of romantic love, recognizing Irish
nationalism as absurd, and turning in revulsion from the Jesuits.
Stephen chooses exile as the only means of flying by these constricting prefabricated
sources of identity, even if this exile means a life of loneliness and seclusion. But one must
ask whether such liberation and claim for exclusion can even be possible. Albeit the Portrait
fails to divulge such information since we only see Stephen as a fully developed individual
whose liberation comes along with his rebellious Satan-like declaration of non serviam at the
end of the novel, Trilling on the other hand offers the explanation as an illusion of free will
a necessary belief that at one point the self is capable of standing out of the reach of culture.
Only with so strong a belief is it possible for society to be subjected to the critical scrutiny of
the self for the sake of social evolution. Therefore it becomes evident that Stephen assumes a
synecdochical role in terms of society since the development of his identity becomes
inextricably intertwined with his desire "to forge in the smithy of [his] soul the uncreated
conscience of [his] race". In other words, as Trilling surmises in his essay, "the development
of the individual mind recapitulates the development of the culture" making the self,
substantial and inseparable part of culture.