Eveline is a short story taken from the James Joyce’s DUBLINERS. It is about a woman who has to decide to leave her life and go away with her lover or to stay home and live with her father and her brother.
The story is organized into eight sequences and it is written almost in the past simple form. James Joyce adopts the 3rd person narrator because in that way the reader could read everything even what crosses in Eveline’s mind.
The first sequence is the introductory one because it tells the reader where the short story is set. It is set in Eveline’s house in Dublin. She sits in front of the window and she describes the external setting, filtered by Eveline’s mind. The description of the city is conveyed in a concrete and minute way and the reader could feel what she feels. James Joyce uses the verb “to invade”, a verb which belongs to war, to underline that Eveline perceives the external world as a threat or a menace and the gray-printed houses let the reader visualize the feeling.
The next sequence deals with Eveline’s relationship with the changes. Right from the start the intelligent reader understands that the main character is a static one because all verbs are no motion verbs and she does nothing to alter her ordinary life. James Joyce uses a very little story of Eveline’s childhood to explain why she was feared by changes: as she was young she and other guys used to play together in a field and enjoy themselves; but “then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it”, and she and her friends wouldn’t have played together in that field. Changes in Eveline’s life have been all negative as the one she remembers and her mother death. The most important statement of the first sequence is “Everything changes”: first of all it is written in the present form and it seems as an universal statement; then it shows all fear of changes that Eveline feels. She is not only feared by changes, she is terrified by changes and now she has to decide if to continue her ordinary life or to change it totally.
The third sequence is about what Eveline will lose going away. The sequence starts describing her home and displays an inability to act because the objects described have been in the same place for the last years. Eveline is paralyzed because she has changed nothing in her home as in her life. She is unable to make decisions because of an inability to have a point of view on matters and situations. She doesn’t looks for happiness or enjoy, but she wants to be protected because “in her home she had shelter and food”. She doesn’t look for anything except for what she needs to go on living because of her poor class mentality. She is scared to go away and change her situation because she is feared to have nothing to eat in the future and not to has a shelter to live in.
The 4th sequence deals with the relationship with her father. Her father is always drunk and he threaten Eveline after her mother death. She gets scared of this situation because she knows that nobody would protect her after her mother death. The father’s violence is displayed from the way he treats Eveline and gives her money: she asks him some money to make shopping to provide for food; then he says with cruelty that he wouldn’t give her money because she squanders money. She has not at all any self esteem and she always thinks about people’s idea of her in negative terms. The free indirect style underlines she is lazy, not quick and always depressed. Money become a ghost because it appears and disappears on Saturday night because of her father potations.
The next sequence deals with the relationship with Frank, her lover. James Joyce describes this sequence as a dream. At the 2nd time of the all short story Eveline is elated for the relationship with Frank. His appearance in the story is like an hero’s or dream man one. He is described like a bronze statue. He is the only light that have been in all Eveline life after her mother death. He is a sailor and now he has “fallen on his feet” he probably wants a stable life with her and proposes her to get married. The violence of her father is displayed even in this sequence because he is against the relation with the sailor. After the discussion with her father she has to meet her lover secretly because she is scared from her father.
The 6th sequence is a really short one because Eveline doesn’t give a lot of relevance to this one. There she describes two times in her life she was happy with her father. They are not relevant because that moments doesn’t matter with the all life under her father’s violence.
The next sequence deals with the relationship of Eveline with her mother and the last moments with her. The first statement of the sequence is pragmatic: “her time was running out”. The statement is normally used to speak about people that would die in a short time. James Joyce puts into relation Eveline’s mother death with her because it seems she will die if she go away with her lover. The expression “Derevaun Seraun” (the end of pleasure is pain) implies her suffering. She suffers because she understands that she will suffer if she will leave Dublin to go to Buenos Aires. The intelligent reader understands from the last statement of the sequence, “he would save her”, that Eveline wants to be saved and to escape from her life because it is an “hard life” and nobody protects her.
The last sequence is about the moment she has to decide to go away from it all or to stay and live forever in Dublin. There comes out all the Eveline’s inability to act and to make decisions for herself life. She is desperate and threatened at the same time and she doesn’t really know what to do. Her reaction is not a decision but the indecision made concrete. She doesn’t want to stay in Dublin but she also doesn’t want to abandon her life. She gripped to the iron railing and she makes resistance to Frank because she can’t at all make decisions. The last statement of the all short story means that she doesn’t want to leave her life, because if she changes her life, she will be destroyed by the future.