The Theme Of Love In Eveline

The story “Eveline” looks into the life of a young girl who feels trapped by the world she was born into. She has lost her mother, and her family looks to her to be the glue that keeps them all going. The responsibility of a wife and mother has been given to Eveline at the young age of nineteen, and the weight of her duties has her wishing for a different kind of life. She often sits in the dark and ponders what she could do with her life, but reality always snaps her back. All she has to do is look around her home to see “all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years” (Joyce). Like most young girls she imagines a life with a husband, a family, a home to call her own, and the joys of watching the ones she loves grow old. Instead, she sits alone “leaning her head against the window …show more content…
It was not uncommon to “shop” for a man with a higher social status, or to present a daughter accompanied with assets to induce a marriage proposal. Still, every woman would hope love would be part of her marriage, if not at the beginning, it would at least be thought to grow during the relationship. Eveline was no different. Throughout her wonderings of a life with Frank she mentions that he may love her, but Frank never gives her the spoken hope of love. She comes to realize she is only changing her location, not her situation. She believes that leaving her home is the only way her life can change, but her feelings of obligation to her family and her fear of living with a man she does not love makes her question her decision. In the end, all she could see was “black mass” and all she could feel was lost in “a maze of distress” and all she could think of was “what was her duty” (Joyce). Could she change her mind? “She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.” “She set her white face to him…Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or