Eveline tells the story of a young woman named Eveline who is torn between staying in Dublin to care for her family or leaving with her boyfriend Frank to start a new life in Buenos Aires. The story is divided into three sections that show Eveline's background, her meeting Frank, and her ultimate decision to stay put. Eveline views the world and characters around her, like her abusive father and her deceased mother who she made a promise to care for the family, through her own perspective and impressions. In the end, Eveline has an epiphany and is paralyzed by her family responsibilities, choosing not to escape with Frank as she had planned.

1. EVELINE
from “Dubliners” by James Joyce

2. Main elements
- a psychological dilemma included in a few pages
- Eveline has to decide to stay or to leave
- the story is divided into three sections: her background, her meeting with Frank
and then her final decision
- the objective description of reality is mingled with her impressions

3. Narrative technique
• Even though the novel is not told in the first
person narration, Joyce shows everything from
Eveline’s perspective. In this way the reader has
free access to Eveline’s thoughts and memories.
• Words have an allusive symbolic appealing
meaning.
• Interior monologue, free direct speech and free
indirect speech.

4. Setting
• The presence of the window
gives the idea of the
threshold between the outer
world and her
• At the same time the crowd
at the port reveals that
same sense of loneliness
and loss she was
experiencing.

5. CHARACTERS
• All the characters are seen through Eveline’s
eyes: her father, an abusive violent figure,
Frank, her boyfriend who is reliable, sincere, her
dead mother who is crucial and especially the
promise she made to her.
• Her mother represents the prototype of all
female characters and their sense of sacrifice to
defend their family.

6. THEMES
• The unpredictability of decision-
making and the epiphany at the
very end of the story.
• Paralysis vs escape: she wants
to leave but at the end she
can’t
• Eveline represents the first
woman starting a new age but
she fails: she gets an example
of the mythical method
• The burden of family
connections.