This paper purposes to reassess James Joyce`s Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man from a comparative approach, arguing that Hero is far from an incomplete forerunner of A Portrait. A Portrait has been acclaimed as an exemplary 20th Century Bildungsroman. Hero has been rarely discussed in the Joycean scholarship, for it is an incomplete project in terms not only of its formal structure but also of its artistic immaturity. With his deep dissatisfaction with the form and style of the forerunner, Joyce casts Hero into A Portrait with much modification of style and characterization. Joyce`s recasting is well paid off: a birth of 20th century Bildungsroman. Joyce`s reshaping of Hero into A Portrait, however, pays the price for modification In getting the benefit of economy in focusing on Stephen`s consciousness and his gradual and even arrogant growth of self-consciousness as a young national writer, Joyce loses the effects of the more realistic dramatization of characters in Hero. The inappropriate dominance of the monolithic narrative in A Portrait which focuses on Stephen`s consciousness is the most noticeable when compared with Dubliners, Stephen Hero and Ulysses. The narrator`s closeness to Stephen is prominent in the transformation of Stephen Hero into A Portrait. Every event is basically filtered through all-important Stephen`s consciousness in A Portrait. The more skillful use of free indirect style in A Portrait than Dubliners and Hero is effectively instrumental in making of the aspiring young artist`s self-consciousness and his development as a young artist. A Portrait is not a monolithic or homogeneous novel in the Bakhtinian terms, although it is a modified version of Bildungsroman that put an emphasis on a protagonist`s development as a `problematic figure` and his final adjustment to the world. Arguably, other characters` voices are almost deleted in A Portrait. The rare, but indisputable distance between the narrator and the hero illustrates sharply itself in Joyce`s careful insertion of the scenes of Stephen`s relationships with the female characters. Within this approach, Stephen`s evasion from the female characters lay bare his self-inflicted misogyny. Stephen`s misogyny is felt throughout A Portrait and Stephen Hero. His misogyny is typically touched in almost all the relationships with the female characters; the incessant refusal of his mother, the problematic relationship with Emma Clery, the deleted scene of his sister Isabel`s tragic death in Hero, and finally in the guilty consciousness toward his sisters` sacrifices for the eldest son`s education. I would say that his separation from his mother and sisters leaves a scar on his ideal of a true national artist.