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42 THE THEMES 
Irish Party by the younger Charles Panel1. Finally, there is reference to
a divided and reversed Jonathan Swift, "nathandjoe," whose amours with two
girls, Esther Johnson (Stella) and Esther Vanhomrigh (Vanessa), form one
of the basic configurations for a recurrent fatherdaughter incest motif throughout
the work. 
 This family theme, which occurs throughout Joyce's works, consists of a
series of oppositions in which the conflicting demands of the society and
the individual are expressed. The Law is symbolically embodied in the father,
actually in the name of the Father, as we shall see. The father's conferral
of the birthright on his son preserves the hierarchy of authority that ensures
the peaceful transition of the law through the generations. Joyce's allusion
to the origin of the Church's hierarchy and authority in Christ's words,
"Thou art Peter," indicates the function of the father as namer, or as designator
of identity and position in the system over which he presides.1 The identity
and position of the son in this system of lawful descent is always preordained,
a condition upon which young Stephen in Portrait reflects as he reads the
inscription in his geography text: 
Stephen Dedalus is my name, 
Ireland is my nation. 
Clongowes is my dwellingplace 
And heaven my expectation. (F, p. 16) 
With his careful, child's logic, Stephen recognizes that God is noncontingent—not
fixed in time, space, and identity like he is. 
God was God's name just as his name was Stephen. Dieu was the French for
God and that was God's name too; and when anyone prayed to God and said Dieu
then God knew at once that it was a French person that was praying. But though
there were different names for God in all the different languages in the
world and God understood what all the people who prayed said in their different
languages still God remained always the same God and God's real name was
God. (F, p. 16) 
The son's ability to conceive of himself as a center in the universe of his
thought is impaired by his preordained position in the social order,2 and
a struggle for selfhood ensues in the form of a struggle with the father,
the end of which is symbolic parricide. In Joyce's earlier works, the escape
from the social bondage that stifles the individual and inhibits his creative
powers is provided by the dream of exile. Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses redirects
his struggle toward the symbolic father