Eveline

Eveline, James Joyce.

The author of this story is James Augustine Aloysius Joyce who was born in 1882, in the south of Dublin in a wealthy suburb called Rathgar. He was going to be a priest, what would have pleased his parents, but when he made contact with some members of the "Irish Literary Renaissance," his interest of being priest waned. In 1905, James Joyce wrote a collection ofeight stories called the Dubliners, in which we have the story of Eveline, but until 1913 the stories were not printed. With his inventive narrative style he had established himself as a leading Modernist. In 1941, he died, having a good literary stature.
Eveline is the story of a woman who had to take care of her father (who treated her in a wrong way) because her mother asked it herbefore her dead. He was the only member of her family in the city. One day she met a sailor who proposed her to go to Buenos Aires and start a happy new life. The day of the departure she had a dilemma of what to do: in one hand, she wanted a new life with Frank but, on the other hand she should keep the promise she did to her mother and she did not want to leave all her memories of people that knewall about her life, that is, her family and her friends. At the end she decided to stay with her father, permitting Frank to go away.
The main characters that appear in that story are a bit different, we have Eveline’s father, who was very old and mistreated her, he was her only familiar at home and he had a big influence in Eveline when she took a decision. Eveline’s mother, who wasdied, we do not know much about her, but it seems that she was very homely because of what she asked Eveline before she died. She had an important role in the final decision that Eveline took. Miss Gavan, who was the supervisor at the Stores (where Eveline worked), she treated her badly especially when there were people near them. Eveline’s brothers and sisters, one of them is dead and other oneworks in church-decorating business, we do not know much about them. The Devines, Waters, Dunns and little Keogh who were Eveline’s friends when she was a child.
Frank and Eveline have more details, Frank was a sailor, he and Eveline met at the street, and he had an argument with her father so they had to meet in secret. Then he asked her if she wanted to go with him to Buenos Aires, andthere, they will marry, he promised her a happy and different life. And finally we have Eveline, a woman who lived with his father who threatens her, she was nineteen and she worked at the Stores. She wanted to escape of the life she was going to have with him, and this possibility came with Frank, at first she thought that everything was right, but then she thought of the two possibilities and theconsequences of choosing each one, and when she and Frank were about to go away she stayed with her father because of the reasons I have said before.
Eveline gives the appearance of a woman very religious, it seems very familiar and a girl that respects her mother or father words, in this case the promise her mother asked her, that for me, is a bit selfish, because if the mother hadsuffer yet the husband’s bad tempered, I wonder how a mother would want the same life for her daughter. That’s the reason why Eveline took the decision of being at home instead of start a new life, far away her sadness, and unhappiness. She remembered with homesickness her childhood when she had good times with her friends, but when everybody started to leave the city everything changes, all of themhave a better life, but she was there, alone, and sad, it is not the image of an ordinary young girl. In some cases she seems as if she was a housewife or even the mentality of an elderly person.
The story of that girl cause in the reader a feeling of pity, of the life she had. This is motivated by the melodramatic tone that the story has. The way that the story is explained, the...