Eveline at the window

'Eveline' is one of the fifteen stories of Dublin life in James Joyce's book 'Dubliners' (1914). It is a sympathetic picture of a young woman who has a chance to escape the drudgery of her life, but cannot find the courage to take it.

Eveline, over nineteen, sits at the window, watching the evening invade the avenue. She is tired. Her head leans against the curtains, and she smells the dusty cretonne. She remembers the field where they played as children, the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh, she and her brothers and sisters, before a man from Belfast built bright brick houses on it. Her father used to chase them out of the field with his blackthorn stick. Still, they were rather happy then: her father was not so bad, and her mother was alive.

Now everything has changed. Her mother is dead; so is her brother Ernest. And she has agreed to go away, to leave her home. She looks round the room at the familiar objects she has dusted once a week for years, and wonders if she will ever see them again.

She weighs both sides. At home she has shelter and food, and people she has known all her life. But she works hard, at home and at the Stores, where Miss Gavan speaks sharply to her in front of customers. Her father has begun to threaten her; it is his violence that gives her palpitations. Every Saturday there is a squabble over money: she hands over all her wages, seven shillings, and still has to beg him for money to buy Sunday's dinner. She also looks after two young children. It is a hard life, but now that she is about to leave it, she does not find it wholly undesirable.

In a new home, in a distant country, she would be married, and people would treat her with respect. She would not be treated as her mother had been.