The protagonist of the story, Eveline
makes the bold and exciting decision to elope to Argentina with her lover,
Frank, but ultimately decides against it, excluding herself from love. Her
constant review of the pros and cons of her decision demonstrates her
willingness to please everyone but herself, and her final resolve to stay in
Dublin with her family shows her as a woman trapped in domestic and familiar
duties and afraid to embrace the unknown.
Torn between two extreme options -
unhappy domestic life or an escape to Argentina for marriage - Eveline has no
possibility of a moderately content life. Her dilemma does not illustrate
indecisiveness but the lack of options for someone in her position. On the docks,
when she must make a choice, Eveline remembers her promise to her mother to
keep the family together, revises her view of her life at home, remembering the
small kindnesses: her father’s caring for her when she was sick, a family
picnic before her mother died. These memories overshadow the reality of her
abusive father and deadening job, and her sudden certainty comes as an epiphany
- she must remain with what is familiar. When faced with the clear choice
between happiness and unhappiness, Eveline chooses unhappiness, which frightens
her less than her intense emotions for Frank. Eveline’s sense of family duty
stems from her fear of love and an unknown life abroad, and her decision to
stay in Dublin renders her as just another figure in the crowd of Dubliners
watching lovers and friends depart the city.
Eveline holds an important place in
the overall narrative of Dubliners. Her story suggests something about
the hardships and limitations of women in early twentieth-century Dublin in
general. Eveline’s tortured decision about her life also sets a tone of
restraint and fear that resonates in many of the later stories.
Eveline’s story illustrates the
pitfalls of holding onto the past when facing the future. Her portrait reflects
the conflicting pull many women in early twentieth-century Dublin felt between
a domestic life rooted in the past and the possibility of a new married life
abroad. One moment, Eveline feels happy to leave her hard life, yet at the next
moment she worries about fulfilling promises to her dead mother. She grasps the
letters she’s written to her father and brother, revealing her inability to let
go of those family relationships, despite her father’s cruelty and her
brother’s absence. She clings to the older and more pleasant memories and
imagines what other people want her to do or will do for her. She sees Frank as
a rescuer, saving her from her domestic situation. Eveline suspends herself
between the call of home and the past and the call of new experiences and the
future, unable to make a decision.
The threat of repeating her mother’s
life spurs Eveline’s realization that she must leave with Frank and embark on a
new phase in her life, but this realization is short-lived. She hears a street
organ, and she remembers the street organ that played on the night before her
mother’s death: Eveline resolves not to repeat her mother’s life, but she does
exactly that. She desires escape, but her reliance on routine and repetition
overrides such impulses. On the docks with Frank, away from home, Eveline seeks
guidance in the routine habit of prayer, the clear sign that she hasn’t made a
decision, remaining fixed in a circle of indecision. She will keep her lips
moving in the safe practice of repetitive prayer rather than join her love on a
new and different path, a reliance on everyday rituals that makes Eveline freeze
and not follow Frank onto the ship.
Eveline’s paralysis within a ritual
of repetition leaves her a “helpless animal,” stripped of human will and
emotion. The story shows her transformation into an automaton that lacks
expression, trapped in mindless
repetition in Dublin. She left the possibility of a fully realized life on the
docks with Frank.
