Eveline's structure

Eveline is a short story by James Joyce. The purpose of the present text is to analyze its structure.

Considering the very first part, there is a third person narrator who adopts Eveline’s point of view. The setting is an inner space, more precisely Eveline’s house. The narrator describes her watching out of the window. The timeline is not linear: the vision of the outdoor space out of the window evokes a flashback in the protagonist’s mind. The narrator reports Eveline’s inner thoughts. She reminds when she was younger and happier because her father was not that bad and hero mother was still alive.

Going on with the narration the story is told in the present and the attention is put on the dusty objects inside Eveline’s house, and more in particular on the priest’s photograph. 

After that the narrator reports Eveline’s inner thoughts: she is doubting about her future life and making future expectations about her possible life with Frank. There are very few references to the future in the short story.

Going on the narration is full of flashbacks. Among the many, The first one is about her relationship with her dad, the second one is about her relationship with Frank and the third one is about the relationship between these two men. 

In the very last part of the narration the setting changes: Eveline is in a station and is ready to go away with Frank, but then she becomes unable to act and doesn’t move away.

Taking into consideration all that said before, as there are many flashbacks we can say that Eveline lives in her past, while she is unable to take action in her present life.