8/8/2019 Love Can Also Create Painful Inner Conflicts.doc EVELINE

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Love: source of painful inner conflicts.

Love can often create painful inner conflicts, as we can see in the short story“ Eveline”, taken from “ Dubliners” (1914) by James Joyce.

Eveline is a young woman, living a strong inner conflict, a struggle between her 

desire of freedom, her love for a man and her environment, her family ties.

Eveline is about nineteen, she lives in Dublin. One day she meets Frank, a young

sailor who is back in his old country for a holiday but he has settled in Buenos

Ayres. They fall in love. She wants to be his wife and to live a new life with him.

Eveline has decided to go away with Frank by the midnight boat and has written two

letters: one to her father, one to her brother, Harry.

It’s getting dark, the boat is leaving in few hours but Eveline is still sitting by the

window of her small cottage, gazing at her two letters.

Her father is a violent man but he’s becoming old, she thinks, then she remembers

only some positive images of him, such as when he prepared a toast for her, who was

ill in bed, and when all the family had gone for a picnic (a lot of years ago) and he

had put on her mother’s bonnet to have fun with his children.

While she’s reflecting on these things and her family, she hears a street organ playing

a melancholic air of Italy, that reminds her of the last night of her mother’s illness.That night she had listened to the same air coming from the avenue, then somebody

had given the organ player  six pence and ordered him to go away.

That music reminds her of the promise she had made to her mother to keep the home

together as long as she could.

This is the moment when, thinking about her mother’s terrible life, Eveline feels an

impulse of terror and definitely decides to leave with Frank. He would save her!

She wants to live a new and happy life with him but, later, when she’s at the naval

station with Frank and glimpses the black mass of the boat, she suddenly feels sad,

she thinks about her destiny, her family, her promise to her mother. Frank tells her about the passage on the ship but she doesn’t listen to him, she only prays God to

direct her, to help her to make the right decision. She’s so distressed that she has a

terrible nausea.Then she feels him seize her hand to go on the boat but she grasps the

iron railing, she looks at him passively, with no sign of love, recognition or farewell

in her eyes. At the same time Frank calls her, tells her to follow him but she doesn’t

answer him.

She’s completely frightened and passively she remains in Dublin.