The story is made up of two scenes - a longer one and a very short one.

The Beginning (l.1-3)
In the first paragraph the narrator shows Eveline sitting by a window at home, feeling tired.

The Middle (l.4-156)
Than it follows Eveline's thoughts as she thinks about her present, past and future. Indirectly the intelligent reader learns many details about her life, her family and lover. In particular you find out her intention to leave home, but Eveline is not sure if this decision is wise. The narrator then shows us Eveline at the window again. Again you follow her thoughts: she hears an organ playing, than suddenly she stands up in terror. In scene two the narrator shows Eveline standing with her lover near a boat that is about to leave for South America.

The End (l.157-164)
The story ends dramatically. Now the setting is different: it is no more at Eveline's house but at the pier. Here she should take a ferry to go to Buenos Aires with Frank, but Eveline decides not to move.

The story is a mixture of different kinds of writing:
 bits of narrative
 bits of description of setting and of characters
 bits of direct speech in real time
 bits of remembered direct speech
 lots of thoughts in free indirect speech
 evocations of Eveline's feelings

Eveline is a short story written by James Joyce in 1904. Considering the title you expect the short story tells about a woman whose name is Eveline. She sits all time by her window, seeing people in the street. She is waiting to leave home. Eveline always thinks about her life, her past, her present's difficult situation and about her future: she would like to escape. The perception of the character is, right from the start, as inactive and paralyzed: she does nothing. She sits, she watches, she is tired, all verbs are no motion verbs.
Her mother and her brother Ernest were dead and she lives with her brother Harry and her father. She has got a job: she works in a shop. So she can get some money to look after her family, in particular her father that is always drunk. He became a violent man after the death of Eveline's mother. Her dream is to go to Buenos Aires with her lover Frank but before going to the pier, she hears an organ grinder outside. He plays a melody that reminds her a song of an organ she listened the day of her mother's death. So Eveline thinks about the promise she made to her mother that is to look after the family. When she goes to the pier to embark on a ship together with Frank, she becomes strange, passive and decides not leave with him. Eveline's decision underlines Dublin's paralyze.