Analysis of Eveline by J. Joyce

The short story Eveline is taken from Dubliners, a collection of fifteen short stories written by James Joyce during 1904 and 1914.
From the title the reader can expect the story will be about a female character whose name is Eveline.
The short story is composed of ten sequences.
The first sequence introduces a female character who is watching out of her house. She is presented throughout her actions and also throughout external spaces she sees. Right from the first sequence the reader can understand she is not a rich woman.
Looking at a man passing in the avenue her stream of consciousness begins: she remembers of her past, when she used to play with other children in the next field. She is not sure to have been happy when she wasa child: the verb "to seem" underlines it and the reader understands she is not able to take decisions and to have point of view about anything. When she thinks that everything changes she does not involve herself in this thought.
The third sequence begins with an exclamation mark: it underlines Eveline's feelings. She is looking around her and she notices all the objects in the room: the external space leads to her inner reality because the reader understands Eveline's realtionship with familiar objects. The room reflects how Eveline is: her life is made of repetitive actions (she always cleans that room) and soffocated by the dust in the room, a symbolical element which conveys the idea of immobility and death (Eveline is dead inside her). The objects and the room are yellow (colour of illness) and grey (colour of deaht). They underline the paralysis of her life which is also the paralysis of Dublin in that period.
Eveline does not remember the name of the priest in the photograph: it is a narrative expedient in order to prepare the theme of Eveline's trip. It also shows that Eveline goes on living in the past and that she feels reassured by her memories because she is scared by the future. Moreover it helps the reader to understand how was society: catholicism was a very important element in people's life in Ireland.
The fourth sequence shows again Eveline indecision: when she considers to leave, she think again to her home like a shelter. Her life founds on work, at home and at the store. She depends of other's opinion and she is obsessed by what people could thing if she left with a man. Again the word "perhaps" appears: Eveline' life is founded on probabilities.
Her bad conditions at the store leads Eveline to imagine a new better life. She reflects also about her family. They have got economically problems and Eveline's father is a violent man, with alcolism problems. Thinking about her future she thinks that her life, even if it is very hard, is not so terribile. Again the reader notices she is not able to take a decision.
In the fifth sequence Eveline's lover Frank is introduced. He is totally different from Eveline: he does not only think without doing, as Eveline does, but he decides of his life. All his voyages are a symbol of life: he experimented everything. The reader can understand from her reflection about him she does not love him: she appreciates him, but it is not love. If it was, she would not think so much about leaving with him.
In the sixth sequence the reader founds more about Eveline: she wrote two letters to her brother and to her father. She has not the courage to tell them what she want to do, so she leaves them an explanation in the letters. She reflects again about her father and she changes idea: now she thinks he is not so bad, even if before she thought she is scared by him. Again the reader can notice that, when Eveline thinks of present, she does not think of her, but always of other people. Moreover she remembers again the past, when he was a good person for her.
Then the music of a street organ in the street leads her mind to the past again: she remembers the promise she made to her mother before her death: to care about her family. In these lines the reader can also discover the point of view about Italian immigrants because of what Eveline's father said about them. The thought of her mother leads her to escape: she has taken a decision finally because she does not want to be like her mother. She considers Frank as the only one who can save her, but herself is not sure he will love her.
In the last sequence the external setting changes: Eveline and Frank are at the station. Eveline is not in herself: she does not understand what is happenind and she is terrified again. Her decision of leaving is not sure again. She prays: again the presence of religion in her life is important but she wants God directs her: this underlines she does not want to take a decision on her own because she does not want any responsability. Now she considers Frank not as the only one who can save her, but as the person who wants to lead her far from her family and what she knows. She stops there: he is calling her but she look at him without feeling and not like a person but like a "helpless animal".

The narrative technique used in the short story is the interior monologue: Eveline's thoughts are all connected between them. There is an external space, where Eveline lives, that is her place of work, her family, her house, and an inner space, the most important, which is Eveline's consciousness.
Eveline's characterization is built up through out her name, her surname, her social status, her family, her relationships, her work, her desires and her duties, but also trhoughout her inability to decide for her life and her ineptitude: she is paralysed by what she does not know and she has not the courage to try and to mistake. She is an adolescent and her torment remembers Shakespeare's Hamlet: Eveline, like Hamlet, is not able to take a decision and she thinks about what could happen: she only thinks but she does not do anything (she thinks about the consequences of actions she has not yet made) and this causes an immobility in her life, as if she is dead.
The narrator is a third person narrator, omniscient (because he knows what she feels and thinks) but not intrusive. The language used is simple and the sentences have got yet the right order of subject and verb.
The reader has the feeling to get in Eveline's mind. The writer in this way makes the reader feel and see what she herself is feeling. Moreover the reader can understand the point of view of an adolescent and also how Ireland reality was in that period.