Eveline (1914) is one of the 15 short stories in the collection Dubliners by a well-known Irish writer

James Joyce. With the use of stream-of- consciousness prose style, he characterizes endless
internal struggles of a protagonist Eveline when she is faced with friction between family and
romantic love, considering whether she should stay home or elope with her love for a better life.
In my opinion, not having the courage, not loving Frank enough and many strong ties to her home
are the reasons why Eveline decided to stay with her family.

The first reason for Eveline to stay is that she does not have the courage to leave. She tries
to convince herself that her life is not "wholly undesirable," but Joyce reveals how hard
and undesirable her life actually is when he tells us that she "felt herself in danger of her
father's violence." She gets "palpitations" because she is so afraid of her own father.
Although he beats her and treats her badly, she still thinks that "sometimes he could be
very nice". Her father, who "was becoming old lately", pulls on her sympathetic strings
indirectly. She does not want to abandon him like her mother did.

Another reason for Eveline to stay is that she does not love Frank enough to escape with
him. She loves Frank because he provides a means of escape, but she cannot blindly
choose him because of all of the implications of loving him. Loving Frank means a world of
insecurities and possible failure. Frank has "tales of distant countries," the word "tales"
suggests that all is a false story. Everything she knows about him is what he tells her. With
nothing but the promise of escape, Eveline cannot abandon the safety of the known for
the unknown. Her mother's warning that "the end of pleasure is pain" also keeps her from
making the decision to go with Frank. In the final sentence, we discover that Eveline does
not have any feelings for Frank when her eyes "gave him no sign of love or farewell or
recognition."

The most important reason is that she has many strong ties to her home. Eveline is the
only daughter in the family, that is why when "they were growing up he (her father) had
never gone for her, like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl."
Memories make Eveline feel more emotionally attached to her home. Although her
favorite brother, Ernest, is dead, she still cares about Harry. She has too many duties in the
house. All because of the promise she made to her dying mother to "keep the home
together as long as she could." The love for her mother is too strong to break that
promise. Eveline cannot leave her family behind.

Eveline’s fear of the unknown, the fact that she does not know Frank well enough and the many
attachments she has to her home, prompt Eveline to make her decision. This work of JJ greatly
prove his cleverness of using detached but highly sensitive narrative voice to describe Eveline's
stream-of- consciousness-based mental struggles. Indeed, it emphasizes the difficult life of women
in a male- dominated society coupled with their desire to escape from state of paralysis.