Inevitable Fate?

Inevitable Fate?

“Eveline” by James Joyce is a short story of a young woman with a tragic past who is given an opportunity to escape Ireland and her bleak future. Before Eveline's mother died, she made a promise to her to keep the househould intact. Since then, she has been in constant fear of her father's physical as well as verbal abuse. Her life is filled with thankless monotonous duties.

Then she meets a young sailor named Frank who promises to take her away and give her a home in Buenos Aires. Eveline has to make a life altering decision. Will she leave to a brighter future or will she continue to be ruled by her past and stay in Ireland? Joyce uses the characterization of Eveline as fearful, dutiful, and ambivalent to show that Eveline could not to escape Ireland or her tragic fate.

One way that Joyce shows that Eveline will not escape Ireland is his depiction of her as an essentially fearful and timid character. She is constantly under the duress of her father's violence. Joyce says, “...though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father's violence” (433). Her father's threat of violence keeps her subservient and confined within her father's whims and wishes. She never stands up to him. This shows Eveline's timid nature. Because she is timid, we cannot conceive of her making the leap of faith to leave Ireland with Frank. We can see the great stress that her father's violence puts her in when Joyce says, “She knew it was that [her father's violence] that had given her the palpitations” (433). She is in so much fear that she has heart problems at the young age of nineteen. This foreshadows Eveline's tragic fate if she does not escape. Eveline will become like her mother and her life will be “commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness” (434). Fearfulness is a common theme throughout the story when describing Eveline.

Eveline is not only afraid of her father's violence, but also afraid of the unknown. At the end of the story as Eveline is about to leave with Frank, she suddenly has a vision: “All of the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them. He would drown her” (435). Eveline sees Frank as a possible source of danger because she doesn't know him all that well. It can also be interpreted that the “all of the seas of the world” stands for freedom. Eveline is afraid of freedom because it is something that she has not experienced in her life. She has grown comfortable with routine. When we enter the first scene, Eveline is staring out the window daydreaming. As she sits by the window, she inhales “the odor of dusty cretonne” (434). This is of importance because as she sitting next to the window, she doesn't think of opening it, but continuing to inhale the dust. The dust is a metaphor for things remaining unchanged, but more importantly Eveline's essentially unchanging and stagnating character. Eveline is stagnant due to her inability to take chances stemming from her fear of the unknown. Eveline is ensnared by her routine life.

A further indication that Eveline will not escape is that she is profoundly dutiful. Not only does she have the duty of maintaining the house, but also of maintaining a job, which she works at every day. When her father asks for money, she gives it to him even though he accuses her of “squander[ing]” the money, when it is father who squanders the money on drink. Despite dealing with this on a weekly basis Eveline, “rush[es] out as quickly as she could and do[es] her marketing” (433). Only someone with a strong sense of duty like Eveline would go through the same turmoil every week and still put up with it. Besides working a job in the day, getting groceries every weekend and maintaining the household, Eveline also takes care of two children. She makes sure that “the two children left to her charge went to school regularly