Stephen's sense of abstraction, of distance, forces him to turn inward for answers, and, it is through Joyce's presentation of Stephen's vexed psyche and soul, especially in "Proteus," that we see his young man's bewilderment over the changing, "protean," nature of reality. Divested of his former stringent religious beliefs, wishing to become a famous writer though sometimes doubting his ability to do so, Stephen, in "Proteus," is searching for his origins. He imagines that the two old women that he sees on the beach are midwives; he projects an image of navel cords linking all humanity and ending with Eve, "belly without blemish." He wonders who his real father is: Simon, whose part in Stephen's conception was physiological; or God Himself, Who may have planned the event from all eternity.
Stephen's ruminations lead him to feel a great sense of guilt, which is augmented by his tender conscience, one that focuses upon blemishes and ignores virtues. Stephen feels guilty for many things: he refused to pray at his dying mother's bedside; he smokes Haines's tobacco, yet he treats him with disdain; he borrowed a pound from the theosophist George Russell (A. E.) and spent it on a prostitute; as the eldest Dedalus child, he abandoned his starving sisters to a poverty which was worsened by an alcoholic father who spends his time in bars while the family barely survives; he led a false existence when he was a youth, pretending so well that he was deeply pious that he was singled out for training in the priesthood, yet all the time, he was thinking of naked women.
