A Summary and Analysis of James Joyce's Eveline (2023)

An in-depth reading of Dr. Joyce's story. Olivier Tearle

"Eveline" is one of the shorter stories that make upJames JoycecollectionDublin(1914), a volume that initially was not a commercial success (only 379 copies were sold in its first year of publication, 120 of which were purchased by Joyce himself). We analyze the collection as a whole and synthesize each of the stories it containsDublin,on here.

StillDublinhe redefined the short story and is now considered a classic work of modernist fiction, each of his fifteen short stories is worth watching.pasture analysis. "Eveline" revolves around a 19-year-old Irish girl who plans to leave her abusive father and impoverished existence in Ireland and pursue a new, better life for herself and her lover Frank in Buenos Aires. You can read Evelineon here.

Eveline: Plot Summary

First, a brief synopsis of Eveline. Eveline is a young woman who lives in Dublin with her father. Sua mãe de ella morreu. Eveline dreams of a better life beyond the shores of Ireland and plans to elope with Frank, a sailor who is her secret lover (Eveline's father forbade Eveline from seeing Frank after the two men quarreled) and start a new life. life in Argentina With her mother away, Eveline takes care of the day-to-day running of the household: her father is drunk and reluctant to do his share of the weekly chores, and her brother Harry is busy and travels a lot on business (another brother, Ernest, morreu).

Eveline herself works in a store. On Saturday nights, when she asks her father for some money, he tends to make an abusive speech and often gets drunk. When she finally hands over the house money, Eveline has to go to the store and buy groceries for Sunday lunch at the last minute. Eveline is fed up with this life, so she and Frank book a ship that leaves for Argentina. But when he is about to board the ship, Eveline suffers from a lack of determination and fails. He turns without saying a word and heads home, leaving Frank alone on board the ship.

Eveline: Analisar

How many stories inDublinEveline examines the relationship between the past and the future by examining a person's attitude towards their life in Dublin. Interested in this relationship, Joyce believed that Ireland, which often had the habit of looking back longingly and clinging to the past, needed to move forward and strive to catch up.

Unlike writers and artists such as WB Yeats, who subscribed to the "Celtic Twilight", a mythical and traditional view of Ireland as a land of fairies and history, Joyce wanted to see Ireland fit into the modern world.

In many ways, Eveline typifies the difficulties faced by many Dubliners at the time. Joyce portrays her current existence as drab, monotonous and even depressing, and her abusive father emphasizes the idea that if young Ireland is to become a new nation, the older generation must be driven out. Even the good sides of old Ireland, like Eveline's mother and older brother Ernest, are dead and gone. But there's also Eveline's (not unfounded) fear that history will end up repeating itself and she'll become her mother, trapped in marriage to an abusive alcoholic and trapped in a life of poverty and failed dreams:

As he thought, the pathetic vision of his mother's life enchanted the most important thing in his being: that life of daily sacrifice that ended in final madness.

The promise of a fresh start in a new country (in a city that literally means "good air") seems like the best way to get rid of the old stale air of Ireland:

I was exploring another life with Frank. Frank was very friendly, masculine, open-hearted. She would go with him on the night ship to become his wife and live with him in Buenos Aires, where he had a home waiting for her.

And yet, when the time comes for her to board the ship, Eveline is unable to, and instead clings to the barrier as if literally clinging to old Ireland and the past that is dead and gone, but he cannot. leave. behind:

He ran behind the barrier and yelled at her to follow him. They yelled at him to go ahead, but he called out anyway. She turned her white face to him, passive as a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love, farewell or approval.

The way the final triplet progresses from love to goodbye to appreciation (which even nowto recognizehe?) is a masterpiece by Joyce.

She can't let go of the past, as the first sections of the story show:

The man from the last house passed on his way home; he heard his footsteps echo off the cement sidewalk and then creak on the cinder-block sidewalk in front of the new red houses. There used to be a field there where they played with strange children every night. Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses on it, not like your little brown houses, but pale brick houses with shiny roofs. The Avenue children used to play together in this field: the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh, the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters. However, Ernest never played, he was too old. Her father used to chase her out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh said nothing and screamed when she saw her father coming. Still, they seemed pretty happy back then. Your dad wasn't so bad then; besides, his mother was alive. That was a long time ago; She and her brothers grew up, their mother died, Tizzie Dunn also died, and the Waterses returned to England. Everything changes. Now he would leave like the others, he would leave the house.

"That was a long time ago" and everything has changed and yet Eveline sits there and reminisces about this happy moment from her childhood.

And that brings us to one of the most difficult aspects of the Joyce story to analyze and define. Is it this longing for the old Ireland, embedded in her childhood memories, that prevents her from emigrating with Frank? Perhaps. Joyce's coup doesn't exactly tell useralet Eveline stay in Dublin at the end of the story. Is it the girl's duty to her father and brother that makes her regret it? Or is it a nostalgic attachment to Ireland and the happy memories it brings back, although most people who shared those memories with her have emigrated (the back anEngland, revealing) or did they die?

This is consistent with much modern fiction that avoids giving us clear direction.Whatwe must react to the events described in the story. Life is often full of misunderstood truths and hidden motivations, and sometimes our motivations are partially hidden from ourselves as we find ourselves in a state of ambivalence and insecurity.

One of Joyce's keywordsDublinis the “paralysis”: people feel immobilized, unable to move or move forward, trapped in their own lives. Thus, Joyce believed, Dublin, and indeed much of Ireland as a whole, was at a standstill. "Eveline" offers, in a small snapshot, an example of how deep this paralysis can go and even lead a young woman to give up the chance of a fresh start to remain in an abusive life at a dead end.

Eveline's irony, however, is that the same paralysis she fears —this life of daily sacrifice that characterizes her mother— also prevents her from escaping from this world due to fear or lack of certainty that the right thing would be to renounce the old world to do something. Her crippling world even paralyzes her as she tries to escape it, condemning her to stay in Dublin and likely repeat the same mistakes her mother made.

emDublin

One of Joyce's goals in writing.Dublinintended to highlight the "paralysis" of Ireland, and we see this throughout the stories that make up the collection, from the mysterious illness of which Father Flynn died in the first story, to the emotional and social paralysis that seems to plague Gabriel Conroy in the last story. The people of Dublin are repressed, unable to act, trapped and unable to break free from the city. In these fifteen snapshots of Dublin, Joyce reveals some of the reasons for this permanent paralysis.

About James Joyce

James Joyce (1882-1941) is one of the most important modernist writers of the early 20th century. His reputation rests largely on just four works: a collection of short storiesDublin(1914) and three novels:A portrait of the artist as a young man.(1916),Ulysses(1922) eFinnegan's Stele(1939). Each of these works represents an evolution of the previous one, with Joyce's writing becoming increasingly experimental, dark and challenging.

Like his compatriot, the Irish poet W.B. Yeats, Joyce writes about the land he knew so well: Ireland, his homeland. But unlike Yeats, Joyce had no time for the romantic vision of Ireland encapsulated in Celtic twilight. Joyce said he wrote the stories that make upDublinto give Ireland a good look at itself in the mirror: his vision of Ireland is an unabashedly realistic depiction of a country that, particularly in these early works, seems paralyzed by paralysis (a code word forDublin), in part due to the country's obsession with its own past and with Catholicism.

It is significant that Joyce spent much of his adult life away from his native Ireland on the Continent, where he was able to absorb the French literary influences that were so important to his development as a novelist.

If you found this review of "Eveline" by Joyce interesting, take a look at ourCommentary on Joyce's "A Date",ourReflections on Joyce's "A Dolorous Case", ourReview of the short story "Clay" by Joyce, it is oursSummary of his classic short story "The Sisters". You might like ours tooReflections on Kate Chopin's Modernist Short Story The One Hour Story.

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The author of this article, Dr. Oliver Tearle is a literary critic and professor of English at Loughborough University. Among other things, he is the author ofThe Secret Library: A Book Lover's Journey Through Historical TriviayThe Great War, the Desert and the Long Modernist Poem.

Image: Hardwicke Street, Dublin in c. 1912, aboutWikimedia Commons.

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