James Joyce – The Dubliners

Eveline - Analysis

The text that I have to analyze: Eveline, is taken from the text The Dubliners, written by James Joyce and published in 1914

The Dubliners is a collection of fifteen stories: the first fourteen are short stories, while the last one: The Dead is a long story. Just looking at the title of the book the reader may expect the collection will be about Dublin and its inhabitants of the early 20^th century; they are portrayed in every day’s life and each character stands for a whole social class and embodies certain values or different visions of the world. Therefore the reader may expect the characterization will be articulated and full of meaning. To conclude the structural analysis the reader can notice that the collection be arranged into four parts: the first one coincides with the first three short stories (The Sisters, An Encounter, Araby), which are narrated by a first person narrator and tell about childhood; the second one which contains the following four short stories (Eveline, After the Race, Two Gallants, The Boarding House), which are narrated by a third person narrator and which tell about adolescence; the third one contains the following four short stories (A Little Cloud, Counterparts, Clay, A Painful Case),which are narrated by a third person narrator and  which tell about adulthood; the last one contains the last three short stories (Day in the Committee Room, A Mother, Grace), which are narrated by a third person narrator, they tell about public life and are linked to the last story: The Dead, that tells about death as the title suggests. It seems as if Dublin is considered as a character because it is described from childhood to death. So each story consists of its own setting, characters and plot but the intelligent reader is asked to find connection between them thanks to intertextuality.

Considering the title of the story that I have to analyze: Eveline, the reader may expect the text will be about a woman, whose name is Eveline. Probably she is an anti-hero, she is unable to act and so she is in a state of paralysis because the paralysis is what characterized people who live in Dublin. It is important to remember that during the narration of the whole book Joyce shows that the causes of the paralysis are the religion, in particular the Catholic religion, social conventions, the British supremacy and miserly nationalism. However the hypothesis that Eveline is unable to act and she will be won is confirmed by the scene; indeed she is looking out the window and the story is set during the night: the night is the end of the day.

Considering the plot the reader can notice that all the narration focuses its attention on the main character’s inner thoughts; indeed 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. During the story she considers the reasons for staying and for leaving. On one hand she wants to leave Dublin because she does not like her job, her family is poor, her father is violent, her father 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. At the end she will stay in Dublin and therefore she is the typical character of The Dubliners because she is a victim of spiritual and moral paralysis that reigns over Dublin and that prevents the Dubliners from leaving the city.

The theme of paralysis is strictly connected to the concept of Epiphany, a term that derives from a Greek word: epiphainein meaning “to manifest” and in pre-Christian times it was used to record appearances of gods and goddesses. The term is used by Joyce to represent a short moment in that the character becomes aware of himself and of his life: when she hears a street organ and remembers the street organ that played on the night  before her mother’s death; the reader can notice that before the epiphany the rhythm speeds up.

Moreover the text is full of symbols: for example the name of Frank may represents clarity and change, the Ocean may represent life and therefore you can state that Joyce is in the middle between Realism and Impressionism because he describes minutely reality and at the same time focuses his attention on sensations.

So the narrator focuses his attention on the inside setting of Eveline’s feelings; however the intelligent reader has to notice that also the outside world is described.

However, as I stated before, the narrator focuses his attention on Eveline’s thoughts and, in order to make the reader inform about them without interference and in the illogical disorder of the mind, he uses the free direct speech (without the verb “to say” and “to think”) and the stream of consciousness.