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Activity: Eveline

  1. Eagleton argues that modernist fiction often presents us with a consciousness that cannot fully account for itself — a self that believes it is reasoning while the reader sees something else entirely. Joyce gives us almost everything in "Eveline" from inside Eveline's own mind. Find two moments where Eveline appears to be weighing her options rationally. Does the story ask us to accept her reasoning at face value, or does it let us see past it? What does Joyce show us that Eveline cannot show herself? Support your answer with specific textual evidence.

  2. Eveline's thinking moves between the language of domestic duty and the language of romantic escape. Find two or three moments where her diction shifts noticeably — where the register rises toward the melodramatic or sentimental, or where clichéd phrases seem to do her thinking for her. What does this reveal about the quality of her self-understanding? Is Eveline's language her own, or is it borrowed from somewhere else?

  3. Two contrasting sets of images run through the story: one associated with the house, the dust, the familiar objects of her domestic life, and one associated with Frank, the sea, and escape. Identify one or two images from each cluster and name the figures of speech involved. How does Joyce use these images to structure the story's central conflict? What does the imagery suggest about what Eveline is really choosing between?

  4. In free indirect discourse, the narrator's voice and the character's voice merge — we seem to be inside the character's consciousness, but the narrator's irony operates quietly beneath the surface. Look at the final paragraphs of "Eveline". Find one or two sentences where you cannot be entirely sure whether we are reading Eveline's thoughts or the narrator's commentary on them. What is the effect of this ambiguity? What does the story's final image — Eveline's face described as "passive, like a helpless animal" — suggest about the limits of her self-knowledge?