Eveline

4 Pages 1079 Words

EVELINE

In James Joyce’s “Eveline,” Eveline, the young Dublin girl has a life that she wants to leave. She realizes the hardships in her life, and sees that they are the same as her mothers. Not wanting to live the same life as her mother, she plans to leave with a young sailor named Frank. Eveline has to pick from two things: to stay at home or to leave for a life that is unknown to her. She has three things to look at in her decision to leave. One, her father; two, Frank; and three, her home. At home, she has the comfort that she has known her whole life, but if she leaves, she knows that she will have a mystery that has to be discovered by her.
The first point is her father:
Her father is a difficult man who is hard to handle. He takes her money that she works for because he feels that she will spend it on silly things. He then gives her a hard time about the money he does give her on Saturday nights so she had to rush to buy Sunday’s dinner that night. She also feels that she is in danger of her father’s violence. She loves her father even though he beat her brothers when she was younger, but with her being the only one there to take care of him, he turns his violence to her. However, with the arguing and the fighting; it gives her heart palpitations. Even though she has a fear of her father, she has some good memories of him. She remembers that he had read her a ghost story when she was sick and that when she was younger how that he had put on her mothers bonnet to make them laugh (Joyce 526). When Eveline meets Frank, she realizes that with him she could escape her world and that she could begin a new life of adventure and excitement. When her father finds out about Frank, he forbids her to see him; but she goes against her fathers orders and meets him secretly.
The second point is Frank
With Frank, Eveline is able to see that he can open new doors for her. He can take to parts of the world tha...