What is the significance of women in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man?

The main female
character in this important novel is that of Emma, who only seems to appear as part of fragments
of Stephen's earliest childhood memories. He certainly is never able to connect with her as a
real individual, and in the novel it is clear that she turns into a symbol of a love that is
based on purity rather than the confusing sexual desires that Stephen comes to experience as he
matures. The way in which Stephen...