Many critics and readers wonder what would have happened had Eveline left Dublin with her lover. What is the significance of the destination of Buenos Aires in the story? Research the history of Argentina to discover what life might have been like in Buenos Aires for an Irish immigrant sailor and his wife. Were the economic and social conditions for Catholics better than they were in Dublin?

Read Virginia Woolf's The Voyage Out (1920). How do you think Woolf's vision of a young woman's awakening differs from that of Joyce? Do you think Eveline would have undergone a similar fate to Rachel had she left with Frank for South America? Woolf and Joyce are both considered major modernist writers; what do their debut works have in common?

Most critics now consider Dubliners a unified work of fiction. Read the other stories in the...