EVELINE analysis:

Eveline is a short story published in “The Dubliners” written by James Joyce where the protagonist is an adolescent who belongs to the working class and she’s consider as a flat character because she does not seem to change during the whole story.
The story is told from the narrator’s point of view that takes Eveline’s point of view using the shift of point of view. Joyce decides to tell the story not from the psychical point of view, but the reader knows only Eveline’s emotions and memories of the past: a characteristic of postmodernism “stream of consciousness”.
Moreover, the setting is very important and that is why Joyce chooses three different settings: the inner setting (Eveline’s house), the external setting (station) and the mental setting (her memories). Talking about the language, Joyce uses a very simple language with short phrases and uses the structures of “used to”, “would”, “was going to” to express the idea of past memories.
However, Joyce represents the idea of violence in an indirect way because it helps the reader to know why Eveline wants to escape: she does not want to suffer as her mother and to be raped.
Finally, her passive attitude underlines her inability to take decisions: she likes Frank but she has not the courage to leave home, indeed he becomes a means of escape from her real life of violence. She seems to be paralyzed and has no consciousness when she has to leave her father and the house, she remembers her best past memories.