The object of the present text is to provide my personal analysis of Eveline.

It is not meant to give definitive answers but I am going to make some possible conjectures about the meaning of the short stories supported by textual references and textual analysis.

To start with, Eveline is a short story written by James Joyce in 1914 and as it is clear and common in short stories, the atmosphere creates effects on the connotative level and adds meaning to the story.

Since the title of the novel is Eveline I may assume that Eveline is the protagonist of the short story but consequently I want to know who Eveline is and why Joyce wrote a short story which had her name as title.

The story takes place in Dublin, the first part in Eveline’s house and it reminds to the reader the idea of an inner place and since it is an inner place it maybe represents Eveline’s intimate feelings, emotions and her difficult to take decision, to manage problems and situation and to face the outside world. On the other part an inner place also reminds to the idea of something in which the protagonist could protect and hidden herself. The second part is set in the station at North Wall, an outside place, and it is linked to the beginning of a new life since Eveline has to leave her natal house to move with her boyfriend Frank to Buenos Ayres.

In Eveline there is not a linear concept of time but a simultaneous one because it is present the new modernist concept of time, promulgated by Freud, James and Bergson, in which time is the sum of past memories and future expectations. In Eveline there is the new concept of time because there are a lot of flashback in which Eveline remembered the past and there are also expectation of her new life. 

Eveline’s biggest desire is to escape with Frank in an other land, far from her home, and it is narrated by James Joyce through her consciousness and what she think while she is looking around her, inside her bedroom and out of her window: here the narrator used the narrative technique of the “stream of consciousness”.

Flashback are useful also to create Eveline’s personality which comes to life since the beginning, while she is looking out of the window. Since the beginning Eveline appears as a person who lives a life she does not want to live.

She is an Irish teenager who belongs to a poorer working-class and who has a difficult familiar situation: Eveline has lost her mother and her brother Ernest, her other brother Harry was in the church decorating business and he is always far from them house and she is a violence’s victim from her father. It is clear that Eveline never be autonomous and she can not make choice and manage situation by her self. Eveline has a close mind as the place in which the story takes place and she represents the typical woman of 19th century who is full of fears and doubt as a consequence of point of references’s lost.  

In addition she always depends on other peoples judgements and on her father’s orders. Such thesis is confirmed at the end of the story, when she decides not to go away with Frank because she is scared to betray her family.

Therefore Eveline comes to the surface trough her name, her routine, her actions, her reputation, her past habits, her social backgrounds, her familiar situation, her level of autonomy and last but not least also the way in which she interact with other people reveals her more intimate feelings and her use of language.

Moving on with the analysis of her last decision to remain in Dublin, the intelligent reader understands that Eveline’s epiphany is the realization that she can not move forward her life and that she will not able to find true happiness going away from her house.

When she is almost to start a new life in a far country she realizes her duty to her family and that she has to stay in Dublin even if she could not live the life she desires. Eveline’s promises to her mother, who represents a void in her life, obligated her to remain in an irremediable situation where she can not take the control. Consequently the reader understands that Eveline tends to live in the past, in her memories indeed since the beginning of the short stories there are recalling of her childhood.

The intelligent reader now understands that her father and her boyfriend Frank represents two different life condition: her father represents the static life in Dublin, the attachment to past values and tradition and also the risk to be victim of violence while Frank represents new opportunities, true love and security.

Right from my reading experience what kept the reader’s attention are the narrative choices used by the writer which consists both in telling and showing therefore the reader is able to create a balance.

It is used the simple past even if habits are not reported and the reason why it is used may be to create a concert situation.

James Joyce used a third person narrator who is not present in the scene but speaks trough Eveline’s point of view and it drags the reader into the characters mind and therefore involves him in the story told but without being totally conditioned by narrator’s filter. 

There is a narrative voice which may be Eveline’s consciousness, indeed the narration is a perfect representation of Eveline’s ideas as she is the narrator of the short story.

It is a common characteristic of modernist stories: the narrator is not present in the scene and he does not interview in the narration with comments or judgments but it allows the reader to understand the narration by himself.

As a result of such narrative choices the reader seems to be free to make personal judgements about Eveline and her story.

Joyce described the different places to create a visual image to the reader and to make the situation easier to understand.

It is clear that the register used is informal.

Moreover it is frequent the use of verbs and expressions which recall a past dimension and belong to the semantic field of memory and Eveline comes to the surface trough words which remind to a sense of loneliness, fear and expressions which reveal her impossibility Ito take decision by her self.

All things considered I think James Joyce wrote Eveline to show people the typical man of nineteenth century, a man who has lost his point of references, who has no more something in which believe and who is constrict to be submit by her father to continue her life and to live a life which is not how she wants.

The epiphany represents the attachment to past values and tradition and the inability to start a new life.