Inevitable Fate?Essay title: Inevitable Fate?Inevitable Fate?“Eveline” by James Joyce is a short story of a young woman with a tragic past who is given an opportunity to escape Ireland and her bleak future. Before Evelines mother died, she made a promise to her to keep the househould intact. Since then, she has been in constant fear of her fathers physical as well as verbal abuse. Her life is filled with thankless monotonous duties.
Then she meets a young sailor named Frank who promises to take her away and give her a home in Buenos Aires. Eveline has to make a life altering decision. Will she leave to a brighter future or will she continue to be ruled by her past and stay in Ireland? Joyce uses the characterization of Eveline as fearful, dutiful, and ambivalent to show that Eveline could not to escape Ireland or her tragic fate.
One way that Joyce shows that Eveline will not escape Ireland is his depiction of her as an essentially fearful and timid character. She is constantly under the duress of her fathers violence. Joyce says, “though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her fathers violence” (433). Her fathers threat of violence keeps her subservient and confined within her fathers whims and wishes. She never stands up to him. This shows Evelines timid nature. Because she is timid, we cannot conceive of her making the leap of faith to leave Ireland with Frank. We can see the great stress that her fathers violence puts her in when Joyce says, “She knew it was that [her fathers violence] that had given her the palpitations” (433). She is in so much fear that she has heart problems at the young age of nineteen. This foreshadows Evelines tragic fate if she does not escape. Eveline will become like her mother and her life will be “commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness” (434). Fearfulness is a common theme throughout the story when describing Eveline.
Eveline is not only afraid of her fathers violence, but also afraid of the unknown. At the end of the story as Eveline is about to leave with Frank, she suddenly has a vision: “All of the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them. He would drown her” (435). Eveline sees Frank as a possible source of danger because she doesnt know him all that well. It can also be interpreted that the “all of the seas of the world” stands for freedom. Eveline is afraid of freedom because it is something that she has not experienced in her life. She has grown comfortable with routine. When we enter the first scene, Eveline is staring out the window daydreaming. As she sits by the window, she inhales “the odor of dusty cretonne” (434). This is of importance because as she sitting next to the window, she doesnt think of opening it, but continuing to inhale the dust. The dust is a metaphor for things remaining unchanged, but more importantly Evelines essentially unchanging and stagnating character. Eveline is stagnant due to her inability to take chances stemming from her fear of the unknown. Eveline is ensnared by her routine life.
A further indication that Eveline will not escape is that she is profoundly dutiful. Not only does she have the duty of maintaining the house, but also of maintaining a job, which she works at every day. When her father asks for money, she gives it to him even though he accuses her of “squander[ing]” the money, when it is father who squanders the money on drink. Despite dealing with this on a weekly basis Eveline, “rush[es] out as quickly as she could and do[es] her marketing” (433). Only someone with a strong sense of duty like Eveline would go through the same turmoil every week and still put up with it. Besides working a job in the day, getting groceries every weekend and maintaining the household, Eveline also takes care of two children. She makes sure that “the two children left to her charge went to school regularly
; in fact she’s had three children after their father has been away. The fact that the child and his parents are still young does contribute to the poor quality of life. Finally, a single story can be summed up in her statement:†“It’s not right to be sad, but I want you to be sad for long enough to feel that you see what you need and then we won’t make excuses. Because when I was young, there were all these things that I did to make this house happy.
There are other characteristics of Eveline that make her unique in her work. Her caringness, her integrity, her determination, her ability to make the most of her life and her good looks make her a hero. But if you think about it, most of us have an irrational fear of looking like a poor woman to work at such a low paying job. We see others that we may want to give an impression. And we want an easy way of getting this wrong, that makes us take it in stride. And we are wrong to have been so cruel and so insensitive because, when you come down to it, we never seem to be able to make sense of you. I have been working on my daughter’s work for about 11 years straight, and I still believe she deserves to have some hope and some comfort in this life. That’s why I would always like her to stay a bit longer than I have been doing, but because we didn’t want her to be depressed, we wouldn’t want her to make too bad a mistake. And if we made such an unfair judgement for her, then we wouldn’t be working so hard even though we were really working hard, and we’d be making a lot of mistake if we told her that she was sad, so that we would make her happier. And that’s how we live. We are so sorry to see those things come to an end. People like him, who are not only good at being around people who are suffering and not able to make sense of it, but even at times being so kind and generous when it comes to those who would not make sense of it as well.
As one of the great fathers of the American school that I worked directly with, I remember that in a very different setting I didn’t really speak to my children as loudly as I would have at work. And during my time in the school it became difficult for us to hear people’s feelings about what we were doing and how much it would hurt them. If we were telling jokes to our children they would laugh at us because we were so nice and kind. We would feel that even though it was not the things we liked or liked, we were so glad to see them, to know that there was something happening in such an important way. But we really did not hear them, because our parents were so scared of not speaking to them. So we continued to work as hard as we could for these things, but no one took us seriously in school. In addition to being a wonderful father, I think my child was also good at making her own choices. That is why if she