Summary:
A critical essay in the short story "Eveline" by James Joyce
Adrienne Wrisley
English Comp. 102
Response Essay #1
Eveline
Eviline is unlike any other love story. Yes it is about young love and the hardships the couple were faced with, but the out come is very different. Eveline, who has already been courted by Frank, is planning on marrying him and "to live with him in Buenos Ares"(5). Or has she really made up her mind? When she meets him at the station and they are getting ready to board the ship, all of the sudden Eveline changes her mind and decides that she cannot go with Frank. "He would drown her" in "all the seas of the world"(7) if she was to leave everything that she has known. But Eveline's rejection of not just a rejection of love, but also a rejection of a new life and a way to escape the hard life she has already come to accept. Water is used as a practical means of escape; it also symbolized rejuvenation and emotional vitality. It is used to show everything that Eveline looses through her fear and lack of courage. By not plunging into the "seas of the world that tumbled about her heart"(7), Eveline abandons the thoughts of escape, life and love for the past, duty, and death.
Moving eastward in "Eveline" is in relation with new life. But for Eveline, sailing eastward with Frank is as much of an escape as a promise of something better. From the beginning of the story, she is submissive and tired and tends to remember old neighbors, like "the Waters" who have moved east "to England"(4). She looks forward to "going away like the others"(4). She openly admits that she will not be missed at her job; and at nineteen, without the protection of her older brothers, she is beginning to feel "herself in danger of her father's violence"(4). Her father confiscates what little money she earns and expects the world in return. He requires her to take care of him, the house, and her two younger siblings. The sound of a street organ playing an Italian tune is not only a temptation from the east but a reminder that her mother is no longer with her. She swears that she cannot end up like her mother, "living a life of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness" and her only recourse is to "escape" with Frank. "He would save her"(6) if she goes with him across seas. When she fails to leave with him, she is sucked into the prospect of an imprisoning life like her mother's.
Water symbolizes rejuvenation and all of the possibilities that come along with a new life. In contrast to her current life full of "hard work", Eveline looks forward to "another life with Frank"(6) and a new her over seas. Instead of living in her dead mother's footsteps, Eveline finally has a change to live her own life and start over with Frank by her side. Even though she cannot comprehend what her new life with Frank will entail, she knows that it will be unlike anything she has yet experienced. Perhaps it is the uncertainty of her new life that simply scares her away. Known duty and hardship actually seems preferable to any unknown possibilities, and as Frank pulls her into the "seas of the world" she feels that "it was impossible"(7). One cannot begin a new life without leaving behind the old and that is too much for Eveline to handle. Unable to make that leap of faith, she stays behind, "passive, like a helpless animal"(7).
Eveline is rejecting love and emotional vitality represented by "the seas of the world"(7). When she thinks about leaving with Frank, she sees her home as providing Her "shelter and food" and the company of "those she had known all of her life"(4); she never thinks about the people who love her and would truly miss her. Eveline knows that her family, her father and her siblings, depend on her and look to her when they need something but she does not feel loved. Frank, on the other hand, "was very kind, open-hearted" and after the "excitement" of being courted she "had begun to like him"(5). She knows that Frank can give her a new life, and "perhaps love, too" and "she had the right to happiness"(6). Yet she is uncertain that she will ever fall in love with him.
The world of desire, longing, fulfillment, and heartbreak are tossed about in "the seas that tumbled about her heart"(7) and this unfamiliar world of vitality and power is as terrifying to Eveline as the reality of traveling halfway around the world. She might drown, true, but she might even learn how to swim. But, deciding against "testing the waters" Eveline subjects herself to a life without any fulfillment at all. On the way from childhood to adulthood, Eveline feels that the altering experience will "drown" her old self and she is unable to imagine a new self emerging out of the waves.
Joyce, James. "Eveline" Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizebeth McMahan, Susan X Day, and Robert Funk. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 2004. 3-6
This is the complete article, containing 855 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).
