Exercises at page 514 - Eveline

•       Eveline is in the middle of an emotional crisis because she is not able to decide whether to leave to Buenos Aires with her lover and to begin a new life together or to keep living in Dublin.
•       She doesn't want to leave because she loves her house and because she doesn't want to abandon her family, that is her father and her brother Harry. On the other side she needs to go because of her desire to grow, but also because she loves Frank: she will marry her lover and he will protect and respect her, but at the end she can't manage to leave.
•       The text suggests that Eveline's life is simple, poor and full of pain, because of her mother and her brother's death. She is very young and she is not fully grown up, but she wants to leave with her lover and she desires to begin a new life with him.
•       The expression "had an edge on her" can be interpreted as "she felt a little better that Eveline".
•       Frank is not described in detail, as a consequence the reader only knows that he's kind, manly and open-hearted and that he wants to marry Eveline, because he loves her. Eveline is a young woman: her life has been hard and painful since her mother died. She has a difficult relationship with her father, because of his violence and his lack of affect. She always worked hard "to keep the house together" and to survive: that is why she wants to explore a new life with Frank, but it doesn't happen.
•       Focusing the attention on the sequencing of the paragraphs the reader can mostly notice two different verb tenses: the simple past (Eveline's past and present life and actions) and "the future in the past" (Eveline's desires and future expectations).
•       The phrase "a maze of distress" means a deep mental suffering.
•            Focusing the attention on the sentence "Could she still draw back after all he had done for her?" the reader understands that Joyce is using the narrative technique of the omniscient narrator: he owns more information than the reader does.