Critical Analysis Of Eveline

In the short story "Eveline," by James Joyce, a young girl who is struggling with a battle with her inner self. She is a victim of being absorbed by her own world only to be living a depressing, boring life until she meets a gentleman named "Frank" that will bring an abundance of hope for a better life. One of the problems of her life is the idea of stillness, because just like dust nothing goes on. An opportunity is presented for her to leave her life with new adventure. Unfortunately, Eveline has conflict within herself of a promise that she had made. Eveline is stuck in her own world, but she does not want to leave creating a paralysis.

Eveline 's lives an extremely depressing lifestyle as she spends most of her day looking out the window

Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father 's violence” (Joyce). Eveline is fearful that her father will neglect and feels that she should move on with Frank as he does not express these features of her father 's personality: "Frank was very kind, manly, and open-hearted” (Joyce). She trusts that Frank would take care of her and save her from her life of paralysis. According to "The necropolis of love: James Joyce 's Dubliners", describes what Eveline is trying to search for in life that Frank would offer: "Her trivial and sad life in Dublin can finally be replaced with happiness and love, and the possibility for a felicitous existence with Frank can actually replace her motionless and grey everyday life"(Boysen 161). Eveline is disinterested in living her everyday life of cleaning and taking care of her father. Frank is presenting the vacuous opportunity that every woman dreams of having. Therefore, Eveline is looking for escape, as the narrator states, "Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live” (Joyce). Frank was her opportunity of leaving her life of unhappiness,

Eveline cannot leave her saddened old life to start a new one with Frank because of confliction that is presented to her. There is conflict with a promise that she had made to her mother: "remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could” (Joyce). Eveline 's mother has passed away she still deals with conflict that is brought by her mother to keep the family together. Therefore, Eveline does not really have a family anymore to take care of other than her father, who she feels might be abusive to her later. Eveline had two brothers, but the one brother had died and the other went away: " Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country” (Joyce). This shows that Eveline has no siblings to take care of as her mother had wanted her too. Her brother, Harry, has moved away so she feels the need that "She was going to go away like the others, to leave her home” (Joyce). Eveline had to grow up and learn to be responsible as she had to take care of the family. In "Missing Pieces in Joyce 's Dubliners" explains the role Eveline had to portray, "The young woman knows from her own life and the life of her mother that the job of wife can be mean and unrewarding, and that marriage can be hell for a woman, a brutalized life " 'of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness '" (French 40). Essentially, Eveline was torn on either to live the life of her dreams with