A Summary on James Joyce’s Eveline

In James Joyce’s “Eveline”, Eveline remains in Dublin to care for her father, to take care of the house and the kids, and she realized she was already comfortable in her current home. Eveline has lived in Dublin her whole life in Dublin and has seen her siblings either leave home or pass away through time. Yet she remains in the house that she grew up in, experienced the changes in environment, changes in time, and the change in the people around her. She has seen her mother pass away, her father grow older and crueler. She has witnessed the field “in which they used to play every evening with other people’s children” be destroyed by a man from Belfast who “bought the field and built houses in it – not like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs” (420). Yet through all the change around her, all the trouble in her life at the very moment to depart from it; the internal struggle within her ends with her deciding to stay in Dublin. Why? Because in the end she realizes her leaving Dublin has far more consequences than her staying. It all comes down to the fear of leaving the familiar place and to journey to the unknown. Just as William Faulker stated in his speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, “Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it” (Faulkner). It is not the spirit of Eveline that defies her will to stay. Eveline’s spirit wishes to go but it is her physical mindset that stops such temptations. She knew that if she had left she would have to leave all things she has known and enter into the unknown. Even though she remains comfortable, despite some alterations, in Dublin for “She had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her.” Fear also grasped her at the though of being with Frank at the very end. Her emotions and mindset continuously change back and forth between the story. Eveline would explain to herself that

Cited: Chopin, Kate. ""The Story of an Hour"" "The Story of an Hour" N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2013. Faulkner, William. "Nobel Banquet." Nobel Banquet. Stockholm. 10 Dec. 1950. Speech. Joyce, James. Eveline. Mankato, MN: Creative Education, 1990. Print. "On the Resources of Ireland." The Alliance Temperance Almanack. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.