Stephen of Monte Cristo

The Count Of Monte Cristo

"Madam, I never eat muscatel grapes. (65)" 

Stephen Dedalus, as Part II of Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man proceeds, nonchalantly declares his disapproval of muscatel grapes to impress Mercedes, the woman of his mind, his fantasy, who “many years before slighted his love” (63).  Part II tracks Stephen’s awakening to women, but his concept of the woman of his desire draws from literature, not the real world.  He is guided romantically by Alexandre Dumas' novel The Count of Monte Cristo.  Stephen, initially finds the adventure of the romance, especially the deeds of its hero, Edward Dantes interesting and engaging (“he pored over a ragged translation” during his evenings, and the “figure of the dark avenger stood forth in his mind for … the strange and terrible” (62).  Stephen's friendship with Aubrey Mills permits him time for to play out adventures in the neighborhood, imitating those in the book, playing the role of its hero, Dantes.  Stephen even constructs, as if playing with lego blocks, the cave and castle out of scraps of paper and candy wrappers.  But Stephen gradually finds himself fascinated by the romantic figure of Dantes' beloved, Mercedes, who he imagines appearing among the trellises of the coastal city of Marseilles.  Aware of the power of his imagination, Stephen thinks himself different from the other boys he goes to school or plays with at home (“he was different from others” (65).  His detachment extends beyond his romantic desires, but by imagining himself as Dantes, the lover of Mercedes, Stephen’s detachment helps him escape from the burdens of his family's declining economic situation, and removes himself from their increasing poverty (he is pulled from boarding school, the family moves, and his father sells his furniture).  Stephen believes he will be “transfigured” by a romantic tryst.  More drawn to the literary character Mercedes than to the real-life women around him (Stephen is unimpressed by his father’s friend’s recollection that his father had once been “the handsomest man in Cork” whom the women all looked at (92)), Stephen revisits Mercedes in his imagination throughout Part II.  But those “moments passed and the wasting fires of lust sprang up again” (99).  Finally, in his wanderings one night, he encounters a woman in real life and gives in to his passions “surrendering himself to her” (101).