EVELINE'S CHARACTER

Eveline is the protagonist of one of Dubliners'fifteen short stories. Eveline, like all characters of Dubliners, seems to be paralysed. The inability to move also has a strongly symbolical meaning: Jame Joyce wants to prove Dubliners and so Eveline seem to be affected by an incapacity to act, and in the worst chases to be unable to take decisions because they don't have any points of view on matters and situations. He perfectly makes the reader aware of Eveline's paralysis using suitable stylistic choises: the first one is the girl's introduction when she feels meneaced by the external world (seen as a negative place) that invade the avenue. The same setting, together with time references, puts the character in a closed, almost clostrophobic place from which she sould be swollowed. In this way she may looks like AN ADULESCENT OUT OF PEACE in such house. She is stucked inside her home and "W" alliterations (Watching, WindoW) enphatize the solubre effect: indeed her house is grey, everything seems to be covered by DUST, by SHADE. Eveline feels at home only among her familiar object that doesn't make her afraid. Habits is what her life is made of, she "had dusted" her house, her objects "ONCE A WEEK FOR SO MANY YEARS".The sense of her routine is conveied by the alliterative ure of the sound "R" (Round, Room, Reviewing). So DUST becomes the paradigmatic symble/metaphore of her existence.

Time references PROJECT HER LIFE IN THE PAST (meanly verb tences are simple past, when not past perfect or use to construction convey the idea of habits in the past). This explains the difficulty for her to cut with her past, she doesn't appear to have any positive feelings about the future.

Everything crossing her mind passes through the past, even worst through other's people's think. Gossips interest her more than following her aspectations. "Say she was a fool", "Was taht wise?"underlines she is not sure about her decisions.

Therfore her working class really doesn't returne her any motivation to go on living her life with hops and desires as an adulescent should be. In addition, threating figure of the violent father makes her every day-by-day life more and more shabbier.

Nevertheless Eveline sometimes seems to dream about the possibility to take distances from her situation; an istance could be the voyage with Frank. Her mind and fantasy are inhabitated by curious questions ("she had never found out the name..."). that should no be surprising considered that everything she is sorrounded by, is either "YELLOWING" and "BROKEN".

Joyce is a typical modern novelist adopting a typical 3rd omniscent person narrator who steps in Eveline's mind; the narrator adopts the character's point of view to convey the idea of a protagonist who HAS NOT A POINT OF VIEW. Even if she think to escape to from her familiar reality, actually she has no intentions to leave har home, her familiar objects which characteriza Eveline. Actions, hops and aspectations remain fantasy, dreams to inhabit the girl's mind and there is a continuos questioning reality.