Joyce's voices: Eveline's Story - Essay Example

Essay: Literature This short story revolves around the life of a young woman by the Eveline. The nineteen-year-old woman remembers her past with great nostalgia. She takes about her freedom less life especially after her mother passes away. She is determining to flee with her boyfriend to find freedom, but she finds herself held up by her past. Evelines story attracts lots of strong reaction. As young girl, Eveline was deprived of the right to play with fellow kids as she mentions her father hunting them with his blackthorn stick while playing with the neighbor’s children.

She had not accessed freedom since her childhood. It hurts a lot to see a father denying his kids the right to play which is a necessary and fundamental activity for young children. Exercise helps the children to grow healthy and active in life. Despite brutal treatment, her father gives her; she still loves him when she recalls the days her father used to treat her when her mother was still alive. Therefore, it is saddening to see her desperately loving someone who seems not to care about her.

When she resolves to elope with her boyfriend in order to find freedom, she takes a critical look of her surrounding, her sweet home where she has resided for at least nineteen years. The familiar objects covered in dust and the yellow picture of an unknown priest seems to hold her back. It is hard to break with things that remind of your past especially when it concerns the person you loved most. These familiar objects and the picture of an unknown priest must have been important to her mother and her.

She has to remain back to guard the things something Eveline’s mother would have done if she were alive. She thinks of the consequence of leaving her home, she thinks how her neighbors will talk about her and how life will be when she is married. Eveline’s mother must have been treated with little respect from the fact that she says she thinks people will treat her with respect. Her decision to stay indicates Eveline’s choice of her community over an isolated strange country despite the fact that the community seems ruptured.

Her home is much better than Franks lodging that is temporary. Furthermore, she had promised her to unite their home. Hence, there is hope for stability and unity in the future. The haunt of her mother’s dying words which had a warning to her change her thoughts of going to exile (Joyce et al, 1997).Like Eveline, Jacky, my classmate narrated to me how her father was mistreating her. She had lost her mother through a tragic road accident when she was twelve years old. Her father was a drug user, and he had no time for her.

He never allowed Jacky to mingle with her friends and ever since her mother passed away; she took over nanny’s work. Jacky, who is now a young woman, was offered an opportunity by her uncle, but like Eveline, she cannot leave her father who stood with her always before getting into extreme addiction (Joyce et al. 2006). She is determined to unite her home by choosing to stay with her father despite pressure by her uncle to abandon him. Jacky says her mother had made her nice clothes and thought her how to use the tailoring machine.

Her mother’s tailoring machine is and clothes she had made for her pull her to stay back. Traditionally, Eveline has been regarded as a character who cannot take advantage of an opportunity to escape. She is unable to leave Ireland’s shores even after getting an opportunity to leave a limited economic potential and an abusive father. Eveline’s promise to her mother bounds her not leave despite the sailor waiting for her. A critic such as Katherine and Hugh Kenner argues that she made the right decision by choosing to stay.

They give examples of those who had done so in the past and settled being exploited, disappointed and betrayed. Some even ended up in white slavery and lost their lives (Kenner, 1978).ReferencesJoyce, J., & Norris, M. (2006). Dubliners: Authoritative text, contexts, criticism. New York: W.W. Norton.Kenner, H. (1978). Joyces voices. Berkeley: University of California Press.Kovacs, M., & Joyce, J. (1997). Dubliners: James Joyce : Curriculum unit. Rocky River, Ohio: Center for learning.