Comprehension

Ø  Eveline is in the middle of an emotional crisis. What is her dilemma?

Eveline is in the middle of an emotional crisis because she does not know what she has to do: she is not sure whether to go away, to Buenos Aires,  with her lover Frank or to stay in Dublin with her family.

Ø  What are her reasons for staying and her reasons for leaving? What does she finally decide to do?

During the narration Eveline considers her reasons for staying and her reasons for leaving. On one hand she wants to leave Dublin because she does not like her job, her family his poor, her father is violent, her mother was died and she would be respected in Buenos Aires; on the other hand she wants to stay in Dublin because she is overwhelmed by nostalgia, she remembered some episodes in which her father was kind and the promise that she had done to her mother: to take care of her family. Therefore Eveline is the typical character of James Joyce’s Dubliners; indeed she is a victim of a spiritual and moral paralysis that reigns over Dublin and that prevents the Dubliners from leaving the city.  

Ø  What does the text say or imply about Eveline's life?

Her life was very hard, she had to face her mother's death and she had to care her family, even though her father was very grim with her. In addition when she worked she had to bear of the other workers' punctiliousness, in particular Miss Gavan's one.

Ø  Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on her,... How you can rephrase this sentence to make the expression had and edge on her clearer?

The phrase following is ...whenever there were people listening… so the reader understands Miss Gavan's severity and not apprehension. Had an edge of her can be rephrased by she was very fussy with her, maybe for Eveline's youth.

Ø  What kind of people are Frank, Eveline and Eveline's father?

Frank is a responsible guy who does not seem to be influenced by the other Dubliners' paralysis. Eveline's father seems frustrated for his wife's death and social condition and Eveline had to bear the situation. But both Eveline and her father are paralysed and tied to past, while her brother left Dublin and his past condition to follow his desires. Her father is not able to start again without her wife and Eveline is afraid about her future life, which could be different from the present one. So they are drep.

 

 

 

 

 

Interpretation

Ø  Focus on the sequencing of the paragraphs. Can you trace the time shifts in the structure of the story?

 

Considering the sequencing of the paragraphs an intelligent reader can notice that the narrator blends events which belong to past, present and  future; therefore there are many time shifts in the structure of the story. Considering the past she remembered the time in that she was a child and she played in a field with her brothers and her friends, the time in that she went with her family to the Hill of Howth for a picnic and her father put on her mother’s bonnet to make children laugh or the time in that her mother was dying. The events considered are blended with the future, that on one hand may bring happiness and on the other hand scares, and present, in that she thinks about what is the better choice.

 

Ø  Focus on the last paragraphs. What is the meaning of the phrase “a maze of distress”? Can other worlds be linked to this image?

The phrase “a maze of distress” underlines that she is not able to understand what she has to do, indeed after this expression there is the phrase: ..she prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty… that underlines her hesitation: she asks for help from God. Moreover the expression considered at the beginning may be linked with words like: nausea, helpless animal, and with the image of the sea: …All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart…

Ø  Focus on the sentence Could she still draw back after all he had done for her?  What mode of thought presentation has been used here?

Many writers of the 19th century focused their attention on the character's thoughts and on the way to make the reader inform about them without novelist's interference. As a consequence in this period writers as J. Joyce or G. Verga used the narrative technique of "stream of consciousness". Character's thoughts are reported in the illogical disorder of the mind. In Eveline the phrase Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? J. Joyce uses the free indirect style, indeed the narrator inserts Eveline's thought in the text without the verb "to say" or "to think".

Ø  Can you find other examples in the story? What is their effect?

Other examples of free indirect style:

·         But in my new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that.

·         Then I should be married - I, Eveline.

·         People would treat me with respect then.

·         I would not be treated as my mother had been.

·         Even now, though I am over nineteen, I sometimes feel myself in danger of my father's violence.

·         I know it is that that has given me the palpitations.

·         When we were growing up he had never gone for me, like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because I was a girl; but latterly he had begun to threaten me and say what he would do to me only for my dead mother's sake.

·         And now I have nobody to protect me.

·         Ernest is dead  and Harry, who is in the church decorating business, is nearly always down somewhere in the country.

·         Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary me unspeakably.

·         I always gave my entire wages - seven shillings - and Harry always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from my father.

·         He said I used to squander the money, that I had no head, that he wasn't going to give me his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad of Saturday night.

·         In the end he would give me the money and ask me had I any intention of buying Sunday's dinner.

·         Then I had to rush out as quickly as I could and do my marketing, holding my black leather purse tightly in my hand as I elbowed my way through the crowds and returning home late under my load of provisions.

·         I had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly.

·         It was hard work -a hard life - but now that I was about to leave it I did not find it a wholly undesirable life.

·         I was about to explore another life with Frank.

·         Frank was very kind, mainly, open-hearted.

·         I was to go away with him by the night boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Aires where he had a home waiting for me.

·         How well I remebered the first time I had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where I used to visit.

·         It seemed a few weeks ago.

·         He was standing at the gate, his peacked cup pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of bronze.

·         Then we had come to know each other.

·         He used to meet me outside the Stores every evening and see my home.

·         He took me to see The Bohemian Girl and I felt elated as I sat in an unaccostumed part of the theatre with him.

The writer makes the reader create a direct rapport with Eveline's thoughts without his interference: the reader seems to be in Eveline's mind.

Ø  What kind of narrator does Joyce use?

The narrator is the third person one.

 

Creative Writing Workshop

Eveline’s Letter

 

Ø  Write Eveline’s letter to Frank after he has left for Buenos Aires, explaining why she did not follow him.

Dear my Love,

I must leave you. Why, my family. How I will live without you, I have not decided yet. But one thing I can tell you, any time I hear the wind blow, it will whisper the name…Frank. And so let us part with a love that will echo through the ages.

Your Love, Eveline