Interpreting The Leap In Eveline By James Joyce

Fearing the Leap James Joyce’s “Eveline” is a short story depicting a young woman with a chance for new life and a glimmering future. The story is dark and dreary as it unfolds itself, drifting between memories and current time spinning around the mind of young Eveline, who longs for a world that she will not let herself be a part of. In “Eveline,” by James Joyce, though the character of Eveline wishes to escape the life she’s living, she is bound tightly by her abusive relationship with her father and a promise to her dead mother, as well as being overwhelmed by change and excitement, leaving her both metaphorically and somewhat literally paralyzed as she allows her future to drift away at sea. Eveline, like anybody who has fallen …show more content…
Change is an inevitable part of life and Eveline has been sitting stagnant for so long, gathering dust with all the objects in her house, that when change comes for her, she becomes paralyzed with fear. In a comparative writing, Steven Putzel claims, “… Joyce subtly gets inside Eveline 's mind to convey the threat of the world beyond the window…” (Putzel 4). Putzel uses the window to show how Eveline is afraid of what lay beyond the inside of her house and the change that comes with it. When Eveline looks out her window at the beginning of the story, she takes note of some houses that were newly built. The narrator writes, “Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it--not like their little brown houses… The children of the avenue used to play together in that field…”(Joyce). The way the sentence is written makes Eveline seem resentful towards her changing atmosphere. She has a fondness for all the things around her that don’t ever change. Though Eveline wants to get away, she is comforted by all things familiar. In a tribute to where Eveline is most comfortable, the narrator writes, “Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years…”(Joyce). Up until now, change has never touched her personal life. For all of her years, she has lived in the same place, done the same chores, and socialized with the same people. Everything that’s been the same for as long as she can remember is going to change when she leaves with Frank and her knowledge of this first becomes evident when the narrator writes, “Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided” (Joyce), but at the same time, she wants the change! Frank, with all his singing and happiness, presents her with excitement and change that she welcomes. She even felt