Clara Aurora Lacarte Broto Curso: 1 Grupo:2

Ensayo de Narrativa:

EVELINE

“Eveline” is a contemporany short-story, it was written in 1914 by James Joyce, this text

belongs to modernism movement.

This story is part of the collection “Dubliners” It reflects a sad period of represion and the

fear of be free.

The title of this story belongs to the protagonist name: Eveline

The main theme of this story is based in the opposite feelings of the main character.

On the one hand: Eveline´s wish to be free, on the other hand: Eveline´s fault to leave her

father and her reject to break the promise that she did to her mother ( to keep the home

toghether as long as she could) because of the woman´s repression in that time and the

social conventions (She is not married but she is the only female in her family so she must

take care of the house and the childrens ) as we can see in page 38 “The she would be

married—she, Eveline. People would treat her with respect hen. She would not be treated

as her mother had been”

One of the features of this short-story is the type og narration. We can observe that is an
external narrator who don´t know the feelings of the others characters, the narrator only

knows the Eveline´s thoughts and her feelings. He tells the story through Eveline´s eyes,

as we can see in the text. This type of narration is used so that the reader understand the

feelings of Eveline her live and her desires.

The focalizer is the main character, eveline, it´s an internal focalizer as we can see in page

38 "she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father′s violence" but, we also can see the

point of view of the narrator like in the first parragraph of page 37 “She sat at the window

watching the evening invade the avenue.Her head was leaned agains the window

curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretone.She was tired”

In this story the use of timing is so frequently, we can see many retroversions like in the

page 37 “One time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every evening

with other people´s children.Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in

it-not like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The children

of the avenue used to play together in that field- the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little

Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest however, never played: he

was too grown up. Her father used often […] and the Waters had gone back to England”

or in the page 41 “Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her
out a ghost story and made toast for her at fire. Another day, when their mother was alive,

they had all gone for picnic to the Hill of Howth. She remembered her father putting on

her mother´s bonnet to make the chidren laught” This is use to provide more information

to the reader.

Also we find examples of iterative frequency that trasmit us repetition and sense of

monotony, like in the page 39 “She always gave her entire wages—seven shillings—and

Harry always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from her father.

He said she used to squander the money ...” or in the page 40 “He used to meet her

outside the stores every evening and see her home”

In this text we can find a lot of examples about Eveline´s past, but we can not find any

physical or psicological description about her, we must know by intuition because of her

acts and emotions. Eveline lacks the strength to make her own decision.She fight with her

feelings to her fear of failure, promise to her mother, or guilt that she faces for leaving her

family and the use of these literaly elements makes more understanding the feelings that

Eveline is forced to deal with it. So we can say that Eveline is a cautious, cowarly and a

bit irresponsible female. This fact becomes evident at the end of the story when Eveline

decides not to go to Buenos Aires and she preffers to stay in her home.

To conclude with this essay i would like to highlight that this story cleary reflects the
oprresion by the lack of women´s liberation in her time, as we can see in page 39

"She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children

who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly," .

"It was hard work-a hard life." It is never clear whom Eveline is taking care of, but it is

clearly reflect that she is unhappy in her possition of a housewife without a husband. So

we can say that the triggering of her decision to be free is this.