Eveline by James Joyce (taken from Dubliners)

This short story can be divided into two sections:

1. section 1 : Evelines considerations of her life
2. section 2 : her moral failure
Section 1:
It is evening and the action takes place in Evelines living-room. Dark and dust characterize the
room. Eveline feels tired. The world outside the window makes her think about her childhood. She
remembers the field in which she and other children once played until a man from Belfast bought it
and built houses on it. Ernest, her older brother, was too old to join in their play and is now dead.
Eveline and the other children of the same avenue used to play and shelter by vigilance against the
inimical adult, Evelines father, who used to interfere with and spoil their play. She also fears her
father, because he is a violent and uncontrolled man and she resents his parsimony. She herself is
only nineteen and there are two younger children still at home.
In the room where Eveline stands she notices the picture of a priest, a school friend of his father.
The priest has become a yellowing photograph, the promises made to Blessed Mary Margaret
Alacoque are next to his picture. All these objects share their being old and dusty. Eveline considers
her job as a department store clerk dull and her superior abusive. She has agreed to be Franks wife
and to leave her home. Frank is her boyfriend and he is a sailor. She remembers Franks courtship,
his being kind, open-hearted and lively. Evelines father quarrelled with her boyfriend since he
distrusted sailors. Because of that fight Eveline accepted to leave home and to go to Buenos Aires
with Frank. The sound of a street organ reminds her of the night that her mother died, and how her
father had paid a street organ player to move off, and how he had cursed all foreigners. She sees her
mothers life as a life of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness. Her mothers last
words meaningless but seemingly Gaelic, were: Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun! (=the end of
pleasure is pain). Eveline is caught between a future far from her family with Frank (escape) and the
passivity of her home city (paralysis).
Section 2:
Eveline is on the quayside and is surrounded by a swaying crowd. She is paralysed and is not able to
get on board the ship. Her relationship with Frank turns out to be a superficial one since she dares
not take risks and she gives Frank no sign of love or farewell or recognition as he urges her to
follow. Her affections for her family and place are the most important ones even if that place is a
home with dusty curtains and that family contains a frequently drunken and abusive father. By the
last words of the story the reader becomes aware of the end of Evelines dreams about an alternative
life linked to love and freedom.
The story is told by a third-person narrator and it is adopted Evelines point of view throughout
the story.
Joyce employed free indirect thoughts to give voice to Evelines thoughts.
The character of the girl is not introduced in a traditional way since we are not given
information about her physical appearance, family and school. The reader is obliged to infer the
pieces of information from the development of her thoughts. It is an IN MEDIAS RES opening.
Eveline appears tired, linked to stillness and paralysis, since she does not move and her only life is
in her mind. Evelines present is linked to stillness and dust. Her past is connected with the death of
her mother. Her future has connections with love, action, the sea and escape. Eveline is compared to
a helpless animal, since she is passive, paralysed, unable to make up any decision.

The access to the characters consciousness is provided by Joyce through the technique of
EPIPHANY, that is the sudden revelation of a hidden reality through casual words or events.
The sound of the street organ can be considered as the epiphany of this story; Eveline remembers
her promise to her mother and understands the emptiness and the meaninglessness of her dreams
and of her love.
The miserable life of Evelines mother has influenced her decisions. At first there is her plan to
escape which coexists with her antithetical wish of getting on living in her home; at the end there is
the failure of her project of escaping and paralysis wins inside her soul.
Eveline is a story of paralysis: she is a simple-minded girl who can not escape the prison of her
home and her fathers authority.
It is a modernist short story since there is no introduction, the main character is presented through
her thoughts which provide information about her past and future life. The technique of free direct
speech is also employed.

Important stylistic devices and themes of Dubliners present in Eveline:

The realistic description of places
The use of a limited point of view
Presentation of the character from the inside
Use of a new concept of time (internal time)
Use of epiphany
The theme of paralysis.
Evelines thoughts are not arranged in chronological order but are freely associated. They are
activated by external, sensorial stimuli like the vision of the avenue, the impressions by the room,
by the letters in her apron and by the song played by the street organ.
Eveline, like other Dubliners, would like to escape from the place where her life is constrained
inside a traditional role. Her sea voyage to Argentina becomes, in the end, also the symbol of the
destruction that is awaiting her.
An autobiographical element is indirectly present in this story. Nora Barnacle, the woman who was
to become Joyces wife in 1930, had accepted to leave Ireland with him 1904 without any sure
prospect of marriage. Nora had the courage to break with the conventions of her country and of her
time, getting out of the prison that Ireland was for a woman of her social class and scarce economic
independence.
Eveline lacks the psychological determination to pursue her dream and is paralysed by her
resignation to continue along the lines already traced for her.