Eveline’s Review

Eveline is a short story from Dubliners by J. Joyce.

The story is about a girl of nineteen years of age sits by her window, waiting to leave home. She is thinking about her life, her past, her present and her future . Her mother has died as has her older brother Ernest. Her remaining brother, Harry is on the road "in the church decorating business".

Her father is violent andshe fears that her father will beat her as he used to beat her brothers, and she has little loyalty for her sales job.

She has fallen for a sailor named Frank who promises to take her with him to Buenos Aires. At the dock where she and Frank are ready to embark on a ship together, Eveline is deeply conflicted and makes the painful decision not to leave with him.

Through the basis of her life, Eveline was undoubtedly a sheltered young lady. The sheltered aspect of her life created an insecurity in which she wouldn’t know what to do if the town “found out that she had run away with a fellow”. Eveline was so sheltered that she had built up a scare to do anything different or diverse in her life. She didn’t have enough outer-relationships to build up the confidence in herself to make her own choices. “She was about to explore another life with Frank”, also distinguishes an understanding of how irregular these somewhat normal events were to her skewed perspective. Eveline was walking in uncharted territory, which most young women her age would have already experienced.

Eveline’s life was also built up as a confused vision. Her view was slightly off due to the way her mother had been raised. 

It is a masterpiece of the literature, J. Joyce is able to convey the state of mind of the Dubliners  trough the use of an adolescent that she isn’t able to make a decision, she is afraid of the possible unknow future with Frank.