"Eveline" - James Joyce

“Eveline” is a short story included in James Joyce’s book of short stories, Dubliners. It depicts a young girl in emotional turmoil. She is very unhappy with her living situation. Eveline, who is the narrator of the story, is debating whether or not to elope to Buenos Aires, Argentina with Frank, her lover. She wants to leave her hard life behind, but she is torn because she made a promise to her mother before she died to take care of the family. She does not want to make the same mistakes or live the same life that her mother lived either.  She seems to make up her mind about what she is going to do, but she makes it all the way to the docks before deciding to stay home.

            Joyce’s depiction of this young woman, Eveline, is symbolic of many young women in Dublin at the time of this story. The young women often had to choose between an uneventful, domestic life or that of adventure and travel with a husband. Although, Joyce’s story is fictional, it serves as a clear view of early twentieth-century Dublin from a woman’s point of view. Eveline begins the story in reflection and turmoil. She remembers the good times of playing in a field across the street from her house, but these thoughts soon lead to the realization of how her life has changed, “That was a long time ago… Everything changes” (Joyce 20). Her father has become abusive, her mother is dead, one of her brothers is dead, friends and neighbors are dead and moving away, but she is about to leave all of the pain of her hard life behind because she has “consented to go away, to leave her home.” (Joyce 21).  She is unsure of her decision because she wonders what people will think of her, but she “feels herself in danger of her father’s violence” (Joyce 21). Her brothers used to take the brunt of his violence, but now, one is dead, and the other lives away from home. Eveline dearly wants to move away so that she would be respected and not treated like her mother, but she also feels a sense of duty to her family. She works hard to provide for her father and her younger siblings, but she is not appreciated at work or at home, which makes moving and living with Frank so appealing. This was a commonality between Dublin women. They had a sense of pride and tradition, but they also wanted to get out and experience a different kind of life. Joyce uses Eveline to show the pitfalls of life for a woman in Dublin during the early twentieth century.

            Even though Joyce was a part of the modernist movement, many of his stories in Dubliners depicted a naturalist theme. “Eveline” is one such story. Joyce depicts a lower class young girl disenchanted and disillusioned with her life, and he shows qualities of both naturalism and modernism throughout the short story. The first paragraph of the short story describes Eveline sitting at a window and leaning against the curtains with “the odour of dusty cretonne,” in her nose (Joyce 20). This paragraph creates an image, which was a major characteristic of modernism, but it also depicts such a common place action as sitting and staring out of a window, an element of the naturalist movement. Joyce also describes Eveline and her hardships as that of the lower working class through his words, “It was hard work-a hard life” (21). Joyce also displays some of his stream of consciousness writing through order of events within the story. The story travels through Eveline’s thoughts of first her childhood, then the place she calls home, to one of her father’s classmates, then on to what people will think of her leaving, on further still to thoughts of the dynamics to her family, then to thoughts of Frank, then on to her trying to make a decision, further to her mother’s death bed, and eventually it ends with Eveline’s experience of abandoning Frank at the dock. The thoughts flow in the story, but they seem disjointed; however, they also seem to follow a type of thought pattern. This type of stream of consciousness writing is also a key element of the modern movement. Even though Eveline ends up staying home and not leaving with Frank, it is a commonplace story that could have happened to any lower class woman at the time, which makes this perfect for the naturalist movement in that she could not change her fate, and she is bound to her life in Dublin despite almost living a life of her choosing by going with Frank. Within the story, Joyce seems to combine elements of both the naturalist and modernist movements, but it molds well into a great story. -

Lesley Carter