In “Missing Pieces in Joyce’s Dubliners” (1978) by Marilyn French, the boy in “Araby” is said to have recognized a desire that “with all its associations, has been implanted in him and cannot be erased” and that it is this epiphany which “lead into the rest of the stories.”(452) Meanwhile, “Eveline” is said to be “a simple story” in which Eveline “does not posses enough will or selfhood to conceive of freedom to do anything.” (452) It is the femininity of Eveline’s choice that mislabels it in absolute passiveness and simplicity. The textual difference is that the boy’s epiphany is explicit: “I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity” (19) and Eveline’s is unsaid, making it vulnerable to being marked as nonexistent. Eveline’s story is similar to that in “Araby” at the two character’s epiphanies come in the form of paralysis and leaves them unable to complete the task they set out for.

The choice at the center of the story can also be viewed as uniquely feminine, in that it is between two realities reliant on men and both of which shrouded in expected domesticity and heavily effected by others’ perceptions.īecause of it directly following “Araby” in Dubliners, the correlation of the two stories is intuitive and in the articles I have read, the analysis of “Eveline” is almost always introduced with its comparison to “Araby.” In “Araby” a young boy is driven by his admiration of his friend’s sister to buy her a gift at a bazaar, but is so struck by self-disgust he must leave. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.” (23) “Eveline” is rich in imagery of domesticity and the feminine, from the repeated “dusty cretonne” (20) to the “black leather purse tightly in her hand” (21). At the moment of her potential voyage, she is unable to leave with Frank and “She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. “Eveline” centers around young woman named Eveline, who faces a choice between staying in Dublin to take care of her abusive, widowed father or running away to Buenos Aires with her boyfriend Frank to get married. While “feminist” is a bit of a stretch, it can be argued that with the choice at the center of “Eveline”, Joyce has written a distinctly feminine story, which became problematic in its contemporary analysis.

“Eveline”, a story that appears in the Adolescence section of Dubliners, differs from this trend in having a female main character and focusing on female roles in Irish society.

From Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to Dubliners, there is a distinctive male perspective and imperative themes like boyhood and masculinity in the work of James Joyce.

Eveline dubliners