"Eveline"
James Joyce
Throughout the story, Eveline balances her desire to escape her fading home and dedication to her family. Through imagery, the speaker conveys the idea that she is losing much of what she enjoyed during her childhood but still feels inexplicable attachment. Despite the expected grandeur of running off with Frank, the speaker argues that home's imperfections can never sever one's attachment to his or her childhood.
From the very first sentence, an atmosphere of defense is assumed. "She sat at the window watching evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odor of dusty cretonne. She was tired," (Joyce, 218). The opening imagery foreshadows the coming descriptions of Eveline's current life.
Whereas once she played in a field with all of the other children and her siblings, the field is now filled with houses build by a foreigner and her sister has passed. Whereas once Eveline's mother shielded the children from their father's violence, she was now dead and her father threatened Eveline herself. New situations had begun to invade Eveline's life. The open spaces and peace of her childhood had given way to modern accommodations and fear.
Frank seemed to be the only stability in her life with his promises of adventure and societal status in Buenos Aires. However, like the subjects of her lamentations, both Frank and Buenos Aires were foreign and unknown.
Like the dust in her nostrils, some memories of happiness from a bygone era remained for some reason. Eveline had promised her mother to care for the house as long as she could. Although her family was in turmoil, memories of peaceful picnics and her father's bedtime stories gave her hope of happiness to come.
When Eveline refused to leave, she suggested to the reader that family is all anyone has that can guarantee true peace and safety.
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