Eveline is a short story, it is taken by the collection of short stories "Dubliners" written by James Joyce. "Dubliners" sets the story in Dublin and one of the reasons why Joyce sets the short story in Dublin is because James Joyce left Dublin which didn't allow him to grow in an artistic sense.
The figure of Dubliners is a negative connotation because they appear as inactive people, they are not courageous to change. Dublin is seen with a nostalgic view and it's the centre of paralysis. The short story is Joyce's judgment against Dubliner's paralysis. When things don't change, people is stuck, they can't see any change.
Short story's protagonist is Eveline, she in an adolescent. The short story takes place in Eveline's house, therefore setting is an internal setting. Whereas the external setting is filtered by Eveline's mind. Eveline carries the perception of inside to outside, external world is perceived as a menace or a threat. Like Dubliners, Eveline is stuck to her habits, she is unable to decide, she lacks of perspectives on life. The way Eveline sees the external world is conveyed by Joyce's Idea of the city, in a concrete matter of fact and minute, which implies Eveline seems to conduct a very ordinary routine life where everything is already seen covered by shame.
The short story is organized in six sequences, each one is connected to the next sequence.
The first sequence has in introductory function. It introduces Eveline, she is nineteen years old and she lives in Dublin. She belongs to the working class and she is an orphan, because her mother died.
The second sequence covers the lines from 4 to 21 and its function is to tell the reader Eveline's childhood, but what important is the phrase "Everything change", it is the only present tense in the entire short story, and it represents the most important breaking point, and it tells the reader that Eveline doesn't want change, because she lives an apparent present, indeed she lives her life remembering her past, and making expectation for the future. It shows Eveline's way of thinking she doesn't want to change, as Dubliners, who seem to be affected by the inability to act, in worse cases to be unable to make decisions because of the inability to have a point of view on matters and situations. The setting sets Eveline in a closed, almost claustrophobic place from which she might be swallowed . Her house is gray, everything seems to be covered by dust, therefore it might be seem an adolescent who is out of place in such a house.
Going on with the narration the image of dust becomes the paradigmatic symbol on extensive metaphor for her existence. Eveline sometimes seems to dream about the possibility to take distance. The naïve reader may expect Eveline is able to dream but that's an illusion, because in her mind and fantasy there are many curious questions . The intelligent reader may soon realize that the short story conveys the idea of a paralyzed mind, living in a shabby world. A very suitable instance of James Joyce ‘s SYMBOLICAL REALISM one that allows the reader to understand the tissue and the nature of Eveline's poor life. Eveline's house is made of walls over which religious images of saints hung like heavy weight. Actions, hopes and expectations remain fantasy dreams to inhabit the girl's mind and then continuous questioning reality.
The third sequence is connected to the previous one because it has the function to tell what is happening in the present, after a digression about Eveline's childhood. The sequence begins and the reader has access to Eveline's mental considerations about the decisions she is going to take. In the sequence is introduced the theme of the voyage, which presents a sense of confusion and indecision in Eveline, and for this reason Eveline is presented as a stuck person to her habits, unable to decide. Interesting to notice is that thinking about the voyage, she immediately considered her house "sheltered and food". The reader notices that the story is returned to the present because of the exclamation "Home", which it may have symbolical meaning, also because the image of the house is often presented going on to the narration. She thinks to her past and her present to make sense to her future. Home is the image of safety for Eveline, in which she can live her life thinking to her past and making some expectation for her future. This explains the difficulty for her to cut with her past, she doesn't seem to have any feeling, any positive feeling, about her future life.The next sequence has the aim to make the reader better understand what Eveline thinks and her story. In fact Eveline is worried about other people's judgment and about her work place. The petty mentality of gossip seems to interest her more than nourish her expectations. Expressions like "wise" or "perhaps" underline she is not sure about her decisions. Joyce's symbolical realism can well be seen in the sentence "her place would be filled up by an advertisement". Then she thinks about her future if she leaves with Frank and the consequences may have her life. Going on the sequence returned to USED TO constructions in order to present Eveline's life, in this way Joyce tells to the reader that Eveline's father was violent, and Frank, on the other hand, was the typical boyfriend that all girls want. The fifth sequence, like the third, tells the reader the present situation in which Eveline is set, that is her house. Thinking about her present she continue to think her promise made to her mother before her mother had died, but she also thinks about her mother's life and how her mother didn't change her life. In this way Eveline seems to decide to change something to her life, and Frank is the image of safety. The verb "save" is repeated twice, as if Joyce wants to convince the reader that actually Eveline wants to change something in her life, but she doesn't, and so she is stuck to her habits. She is an adolescent and so she dreams about the future, she make lots of expectations but at the end she does nothing to reach them. The last paragraph regards the present and the time of decision for Eveline. She is with Frank but she doesn't decide yet. She prays God to guide her to take the right decision: this is an important instance because it shows the inability of Eveline to make decisions, the lack of perfectives and she hasn't a point of view. And then the end of the short story sums up all the peculiarity of Eveline in order to convey the idea to the reader that Eveline is inactive, PARALIZED, tired.
The all sequence underline the low quality of her existence, there are two semantic choice which underline the point : hard is very frequent as an adjective, and regularly is an adverb, repeated twice. Both lexical choices synthesize the message of the sequence: Eveline has an hard life and she always do the same things without nobody helping her, she doesn't feel protected and even worse she is to the point of heart- throbbing. She underlines the position of Irish women in the society. The lines 70-72 highlight the concept of hardship in Eveline' s existence and clearly brings the surface that the idea of living home is more a form of escape than a real choice.