As Stephen matures, there is a natural change in his thinking and character, and from what I understand, James Joyce has indicated this not only by story but by his use of sentence struture and narrative voice. Let me just say here that I definitely appreciate that Stephen has outgrown his near neurotic post adolescent dramatics.
In the opening of the novel: His father told him that story; his father looked at him through a glass; he had a hairy face.
At Clongowes: It was easy what he had to do. All he had to do was when the dinner was over and he came out in his turn to go on walking but not out to the corridor but up the staircase on the right that led to the castle.
At his guilt over his natural lust: His soul sank back deeper into depths of contrite peace, no longer able to suffer the pain of dread, and sending fourth, as she sank, a faint prayer.
Back living at home, after he has recovered from his religious fervor state and acknowledged his true nature: Through this image he had a glimpse of a strange, dark cavern of speculation but at once turned away from it, feeling that it was not yet the hour to enter it.
Brilliant, and yet I am not comfortable with the inconsistency coming from a third person narrator, whereas a change in voice in the first person as he was going through the stages would be accurate. As a side note, Faulkner’s Benjy in The Sound and The Fury displayed some out of character thinking that was probably necessary for his story to be told.
But who am I to question Joyce? It could be a first person narrator telling the story in third person pov, which is in fact close to the truth as the character of Stephen is drawn from Joyce’s own youth. The notion of projection of self onto a third person presentation is quite intrigueing.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology