In September of 1888, Joyce began his studies at a Jesuit boarding school for boys, Clongowes Wood College. At first, he suffered from vague maladies; he felt tormented and isolated from the other boys. After a period of adjustment, both his health and his attitude improved, and soon, in spite of an occasional need of discipline by his Jesuit teachers, Joyce began to impress the Clongowes faculty with his keen memory, musical talent, and athletic ability.
Joyce returned home for his first Christmas vacation from Clongowes and found his family in turmoil because of the death of Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Irish Nationalist Party. Parnell, formerly an indomitable and respected politician, had recently suffered the decline of his career as a result of his romantic involvement with a married woman, Kitty O'Shea; this highly publicized, scandalous affair resulted in his political downfall, and a year later, fervently attempting to build up a new independent party, he died of exhaustion. He was only forty-five years old.
Parnell's downfall and his subsequent death were important in Joyce's life not only because they made him aware of the disparity between Church and State in Ireland, but also because they created within the mind of a boy who had admired Parnell's heroism a fear that Ireland would always destroy its own prophets. The effect of this revelation on nine-year-old Joyce is clearly evident in "Et Tu, Healy," a poem he wrote and distributed to friends, denouncing the man who was partly responsible for Parnell's undoing.
The fall of Parnell seemed to herald yet another decline in the Joyce family fortune, and it was not long until financial reversals and a series of domestic moves made it impossible for Joyce to return to Clongowes Wood. Nonetheless, in 1893, through his father's contacts, Joyce was able to enroll in an equally prestigious day school, Belvedere College. Joyce attended school there until he was sixteen, distinguishing himself as a school leader, thespian, and award-winning essayist, whose poems and essays were published in the school magazine.
For the most part, Joyce’s school years seem idyllic, but two significant events occurred when he was fourteen which helped shape the boy's spiritual and creative future. First, Joyce was admitted to, and later became the prefect of, the school's Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary; and second, he had his first sexual experience—with a Dublin prostitute; this paradoxical turn of events occurred within just a few weeks of each other. (Joyce's attempts to reconcile the trinity of women, sex, and creativity are woven throughout his works.) Two years later, Joyce entered University College in Dublin.
