Eveline

The Dubliners collection, including “Eveline,” is known for Joyce’s use of epiphany. Normally, epiphanies are moments of sudden revelation or insight, and characters often change their perspective as a result. In Joyce’s use, epiphanies take on a slightly different connotation and are used for more quotidian concerns; an epiphany is a moment of sudden “‘revelation of the whatness of a thing,’ the moment in which ‘the soul of the commonest object […] seems to us radiant’” (Ellman, Richard. James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1983, p. 83). Richard Ellman, Joyce’s biographer, clarifies that Joyce felt the artist “must look for [such revelations] not among gods but among men, in casual, unostentatious, even unpleasant moments […] in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself” (83). Epiphanies occur in moments of emotional fullness and convey something specific about these experiences.

Eveline experiences when she remembers her mother’s death: “As she mused the pitiful vision of her mother’s life laid its spell on the very quick of her being […] She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape!” (22-23). The moment is one of the most vibrant of the story, and in it, the intense quality of Eveline’s fear and desperation contrast with the calm consideration she displays up to that moment. However, this is not Eveline’s only epiphany. As she stands on the dock, the world around her blurs while the “black mass of the boat” stands out vividly in her imagination. She prays, giving the moment a nearly religious tone, but the epiphany is not from God. Instead of feeling a clear answer about her duty, Eveline instead freezes in fear and indecision as “distress awoke a nausea in her body” (23). This moment of epiphany reveals not only the same fear as before but Eveline’s inability to choose—and the despair to which she dooms herself as a result.

Another device Joyce uses in “Eveline” is in medias res, or “in the middle of things.” This device drops a reader into a story in the middle of the action, filling in details later through flashbacks or character descriptions. In “Eveline,” the choice to leave Ireland has already been made, although Eveline does not reveal this until the second page. Instead, Joyce opens the story with a description of Eveline on the brink of leaving her home: “She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue” (20). Eveline is not even named until the next page when she thinks in wonder that “she, Eveline” would be married (21). The primary conflict and action leading up to Eveline’s decision are told through her reminiscences as the time to leave draws near, helping the reader knit the threads of her story together. By doing so, Joyce draws the reader through Eveline’s mental experience without any of her thoughts seeming repetitive or unnecessary, creating a sense of actually being in the room with Eveline, or perhaps even experiencing the memories as Eveline herself would.

Originally a psychological term, Modernist writers and some of their close precursors (such as Marcel Proust) used stream of consciousness as a literary technique to represent characters’ mental and psychological experiences. Joyce was one of these authors, using stream of consciousness to particular effect in Ulysses, where the reader is given a view into the thoughts of Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, and Molly Bloom. In “Eveline,” Joyce’s early attempts at stream of consciousness are evident. He maintains the traditional third-person narration, but the story is driven by Eveline’s thoughts and observations rather than an omniscient observer. The story reflects this through the various associations that move the text from topic to topic. When Eveline sees the “little brown houses” (20) nearby, she thinks of the field that used to be there and playing with neighborhood children growing up. Toward the end of the story, hearing a street-organ musician playing a particular Italian song brings her back to the night of her mother’s death when she heard the same song. By forming the plot around the flow of Eveline’s thoughts, the reader is given more immediate access to her experience and feelings, creating a closeness not always felt in third-person narration.