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[ Aetat. 27 ] J O Y C E 293he asked her support for his ambitions and ideas. His confidences wentto his mother, not to hfs father, a man (as his sister May remembered)impossible to confide in.His attitude towards his mother is clarified by his attitude towards NoraBarnacle. In the letters he sent to Nora in that discomposed summer of1909, there are many testimonies that Joyce longed to reconstitute, in hisrelation with her, the filialbond which his mother's death had broken.Explicitly he longs to make their relationship that of child and mother,as if the relationship of lovers was too remote. He covets an even moreintimate dependence: 'O that I could nestle in your womb like a childborn of your fleshand blood, be fed by your blood, sleep in the warmsecret gloom of your body!'*Joyce seems to have thought with equal affection of the roles of motherand child. He said once to Stanislaus about the bond between the two,'There are only two forms of love in the world, the love of a mother forher child and the love of a man for lies.' In later life, as Maria Jolasremarked, 'Joyce talked of fatherhood as if it were motherhood.' 1Heseems to have longed to establish in himself all aspects of the bond ofmother and child. He was attracted, particularly, by the image of himselfas a weak child cherished by a a strong woman, which seems closelyconnected with the images of himself as victim, whether as a deer pursuedby hunters, as a passive man surrounded by burly extroverts, as aParnell or a Jesus among traitors. His favorite characters are those whoin one way or another retreat before masculinity, yet are loved regardlessby motherly women.The sense of his family life as warm and tranquil, which was establishedin Joyce's mind during his earliest years, was disturbed for him byhis father's irresponsibility. To some extent John Joyce served his son asmodel, for he continually tried his wife's steadfastness, which howeverproved equal to every challenge, including the drunken attempt on herlife. James, contesting for his mother's love, learned to use the sameweapons with a difference. A merely good boy would have been submerged,unable to compete with his father in the inordinate demandsupon a mother's affection, but a prodigal son had a better chance.t Hismother must be encouraged to love him more than his father because hewas just as errant and much more gifted, so more pitiable and lovable.For his irresponsibility was the turbulence of genius, motivated—unlikehis father's—by courage rather than by failure. + At firstit took the formof arousing his mother to question his conduct. His answers proved sur-* See Joyce's letter of September 2, 1909, p. 287.t Joyce linked his father's ill-treatment' of his mother, and his own 'cynical frankness ofconduct,' as the principal specific causes of her death. See his letter to Nora Barnacle ofAugust 29, 1904, p. 169.t Joyce writes of Mr Dedalus in Stephen Hero (110 [115]), 'He had his son's distaste forresponsibility without his son's courage.'