James Joyces Eveline - Book Report/Review Example

James Joyce’s Eveline is much more than a tale of love and hardship in 19th century Dublin. It represents man’s basic fear of the unknown and comfort with the familiar despite its unhappy circumstances. Joyce uses the notion of travelling by sea and water to symbolize the unknown and new beginnings. For Eveline, the choice is not a simple one. She can escape the hardship of Dublin and her difficult familial surrounding for a new, yet unknown life in Buenos Aires with Frank, a man who has asked her to marry him or she can remain tethered to duty and hardship in Dublin. On the surface it appears to be a rather simple choice, but for Eveline it represents trading what she is familiar for something she is uncertain about. In the end her decision to remain in Dublin is less about rejecting love, but remaining faithful to familiarity and duty. While Eveline is consciously reflecting on whether or not she is going to elope with Frank to Buenos Aires the reader is aware that on a subconscious level, Eveline has already determined that she will not leave home. (OHalloran, 227-244) These subconscious clues are manifested by Eveline’s constant rationalization of her relationship with her violent father. She laments that despite his cruelty “sometimes he could be very nice.” (Joyce, 5) This she concludes after acknowledging that she has seen her father’s cruelty toward her siblings in that her father would “hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick.(Joyce, 4) It becomes obvious that Eveline wants to escape this unhappy lifestyle and wants a new life. It is however clear that she is reluctant to part with the past and the present. (OHalloran, 227-244) On the one hand Eveline is dreaming of places where “people would treat her with respect” (Joyce, 4) and her hope that she will “explore a new life with Frank”. (Joyce, 5) Meanwhile Eveline is also holding fast to familiarity and the reader gets the clear impression that despite the unhappy circumstances of her current life Eveline takes a measure of comfort in “familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided.” (Joyce, 4) The subconscious decision to remain at home is demonstrated by the following realization: “In her home anyway she had shelter and food.; she had those whom she had known all her life about her.” (Joyce, 4) Now that Eveline has the opportunity to leave her home “she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.” (Joyce, 5) Eveline’s conflict is symbolized by the sea and the turmoil it represents. She wants to escape her life but at the same time, quite apart from finding comfort in the familiar, Eveline is guided by a sense of unwavering duty. She is constantly mindful of her promise to her dying mother that she would hold the family together. However, there is a keen awareness on Eveline’s part that by doing so she is repeating the tumultuous cycle of her own mother’s hardships during her lifetime. Although Eveline believes that she loves Frank, she is riddled by doubts about the kind of future she will have with him. These early doubts hint that on a subconscious level, Eveline is not committed to change. Although she believes that Frank “would give her life” (Joyce, 6) and has “consented to go away, to leave her home,” she persists in self-doubt and wonders if her decision was “wise.” (Joyce, 4) There is persistent doubt about living “in a distant, unknown country.” (Joyce, 4) At some points Joyce makes it relatively easy to discern that although Eveline has decided to leave she will not be going. In her agonizing over the decision she even rationalizes the hard work that she is condemned to as follows: “O course she had to work hard, both in the house and at business. What would they say of her in the Stores, when they found out that she run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.” (Joyce, 4) Further evidence of Eveline’s difficulty with the unknown is manifested when she dwells on the wholly unhappy circumstances of the familiar. She recalls her childhood and notes that her father had always been cruel to her brothers but had not been physically cruel to her since she was a girl. However she sensed that all that was about to change because her father had been threatening her with violence claiming that it was only for her mother’s sake that thus far she’d been spared. With the threat of violence looming, and “no one to protect her (Joyce, 5) with one brother dead and another away on business much of the time, there really shouldn’t be anything preventing Eveline leaving home and eloping with Frank. Eveline further notes that “Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably.” (Joyce, 5) She notes that every Saturday she’d turn over all of her earnings to her father and that her surviving brother had always sent money to her father . Still, getting money out of her father was a mammoth task doomed for failure. He’d claim that Eveline would only squander the money and although he would eventually relent and give her money it would be followed by demands that she buy dinner. In the end, Eveline sums up her life growing up with no mother, her cruel father and her two brothers as follows: “She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was hard work – a hard life.” (Joyce, 6) Yet, Eveline concludes that with the prospect of leaving, that life was not entirely bad. Even in her conscious appreciation of the happy possibilities that a life abroad with Frank had to offer, Eveline’s subconscious decision to remain at home surfaces. She laments that she is “about to explore another life with Frank.” (Joyce, 6) Noting that he was masculine, “kind” and “open-hearted”, Eveline reveals that: “She was to go away with him by night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home waiting for her.” (Joyce, 6) The reference to the night-boat and going away with him are all subconscious revelations of her self-doubt and the growing fear of the unknown. Although Eveline is reviewing the facts and circumstances of her decision to leave home, the frequent comparisons clearly indicate that she is firmly anchored in the familiar, although not entirely pleasantries of Dublin and her family. Sitting in the window just before her departure, Eveline recalls Frank’s courtship of her, yet she is drawn to happier memories of her family and life in Dublin. Obviously she is reluctant to let go. She reminds herself that her father is getting on in age and that he would miss her. In fact he had demonstrated signs of kindness: “Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire.” (Joyce, 6) There were also happy moments in childhood while Eveline’s mother was still alive. Eveline recalls a time when her father put on his mother’s bonnet just to entertain the children. There is a reason Eveline is holding fast to these memories at a time when she is prepared to move on and away from her home. The reason is, Eveline is reluctant to let go of the past as well as the present. More so, Eveline is reluctant to break free of familiarity and she is not the slightest bit prepared to forge ahead into the unknown. Certainly, Eveline panics at the thought of remaining in Dublin and following in her mother’s miserable footsteps. But she panics more at the thought of getting on that night boat, upon which “she caught a glimpse of the black mass.” Joyce is making it obvious that panic about leaving the life she knows behind is beginning to take a hold of Eveline. In that moment, the indecision has come full throttle: “She felt her cheek pale and cold and , out of the maze of distress, she prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long mournful whistle into the mist.” (Joyce, 6) The boat’s “long mournful whistle into the mist” while appearing to be an answer to Eveline’s prayer for guidance is merely Joyce’s way of highlighting the gloom associated with the unknown. At long last, Eveline grasps the reality of leaving by sea to travel to Buenos Aires with Frank as she is about to get on board the ship. She comes to the realization that the unknown awaits her and there is nothing certain about it. The only thing that she is certain of is that she would leave behind a life, unpleasant as it is most of the times, it is a life that she has fully adjusted to and one where the only surprises could be happy ones. It was a moment of realization as follows: “All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.” (Joyce, 6) This realization was far less about Frank and Eveline’s feelings for Frank. It was more about the journey into the unknown. Something Eveline was not prepared to trade for the familiar. Bibliography Joyce, James.(1995) Eveline: Literature and the Writing Process. (Eds. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan Day and Robert Funk) Colombia University Press. OHalloran, Kieran (2007) “The subconscious in James Joyce’s ‘Eveline’: a corpus stylistic analysis which chews on the ‘Fish hook’”. Language and Literature, 16 (3). pp. 227-244 Read More