Growing up (chapters 8 and 9)

Growing up is a difficult process, and it brings about some ambivalent feelings in Stephen.

In chapter 8, Barbara is with Stephen at Braemar. She finds the cork tip of a cigarette on the floor of the hideout and suggests smoking it. As they don't have matches, Barbara wants to open the trunk where Stephen and Keith hide their secret objects, but Stephen doesn't want to betray his friend showing Barbara their hidden possessions. However, Barbara gets around Stephen to do it by seductively leaning across him . The “weight and the softness of her and the movements of her body as she pulls the padlock back and forth” seem to make Stephen forget about his oath to Keith. He describes his feelings as a kind of “vertigo”, as if “there is no firm ground anywhere.”

Stephen gets the matches from the trunk and they lit the cigarette, “which tastes of importance and being grown up”. Stephen refers to taking a puff off the cigarette as some kind of "soaring sensation", something liberating. He experiences a new freedom, as if no rules could set him any boundaries since he has left behind all the restrictions of childhood . This new feeling of freedom makes him feel brave and powerful: “I can open locked boxes and break meaningless oaths with impunity. I’m on the verge of understanding mysteries that have been closed to me.” Childhood is described as an “old dark world of tunnels and terrors” which he is glad to abandon, as adulthood is presented to him in a very positive way :  “a broad upland where the air’s bright and remote blue horizons open all around”  At this point of the book, he views adulthood as a land which offers him liberty and is full of promising opportunities.

In chapter 9, however, Stephen seems to have lost his enthusiasm for growing up as he becomes aware that adulthood also has a negative side. In the middle of his conversation with Mrs Hayward, Stephen seems to realise that new terrors lay ahead for him as a grown up, and that childhood and adulthood are not so different after all. Stephen realises how difficult things are for Keith´s mother and how much she is suffering, as he sees her crying and saying: “Life can be so cruel sometimes. It all seems so easy for a start. And then…”.

Stephen realises adults resemble children. For example, the way in which Mrs Hayward behaves reminds him of Barbara: “She puts her arms round her knees, the way Barbara does.” Moreover, Mrs Hayward´s face resembles the expression in the photo of her as a girl, which Stephen has seen in her sitting room. Therefore, Stephen realises that adults are not so different from children. In any case, people can act as children or adults, notwithstanding their actual age. Behaving like an adult or a child is even described as a kind of game: “It is the face of the young girl wearing long gloves and a broad-brimmed hat who´s playing at being a grown-up with a protective arm around the little sister who´s playing at being a child.(...)”

In this chapter, Stephen discovers adulthood shares a lot of traits with childhood, so he resumes the image he used in the previous chapter and concludes: “ I´m leaving behind the old tunnels and terrors of childhood- and stepping into a new world of even darker tunnels and more elusive terrors.” The tone is very different from chapter 8. Adulthood in chapter 9 is not depicted as a promising time at all. What lays ahead are not “blue horizons” or “bright air” as he thought in chapter 8, but newer and worse “tunnels” and “terrors”.

Stephen is coming of age, and in his growing up process he is making a lot of discoveries about adulthood. He sees both the pleasant opportunities that it offers and its problematic nature. He feels enthusiastic and exhilarated when he experiments love and freedom, but he feels overburdened when he realises the conflicts and responsibilities maturity brings. This explains his paradoxical descriptions of adulthood in these chapters.