Eveline, Dubliners and James Joyce :: Joyce Dubliners Essays

Eveline, Dubliners and James Joyce    "Eveline" is the story of a young teenager facing a dilemma where she has to choose between living with her father or escaping with Frank, a sailor which she has been courting for some time. The story is one of fifteen stories written by James Joyce in a collection called "Dubliners". These stories follow a certain pattern that Joyce uses to express his ideas: "Joyce's focus in Dubliners is almost exclusively on the middle-class Catholics known to himself and his family"(the Gale Group). Joyce's early life, family background, and his catholic background appear in the way he writes these stories. "Where Joyce usually relates his stories to events in his life, there are some stories which are actually events that took place in his life" (Joyce, Stanislaus). James Joyce in his letter to Grant Richard writes:    My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the center of paralysis. I tried to present it to the indifferent public under four of these aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. The stories are arranged in this order. (5 May 1906; Selected letters). (Ingersoll)    In the story, Eveline's family is described poor, and they probably don't live a very comfortable life. The dust and Eveline's struggle for money mentioned in the story all go to explain the misery in their life: "Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably"(Joyce5). This misery also appears in other stories by Joyce like 'The Sisters' and 'Araby'. Joyce could have related his childhood days when his family was in some financial crises to the family background of Eveline in the story: "but the [Joyce's] family fortunes took a sharp turn for the worse during Joyce's childhood" (Gale Group). From the story, we are told that it is from this misery, and her father's attitude that Eveline decides she would leave home, although, she does not leave at the end of the story. Joyce could have been writing about the urge the had to leave Dublin during his youth because he: "[cites] the city of Dublin as the center of paralysis" (t he Gale Group).