"Eveline", a short story by James Joyce, tells about the hopes and dreams of a nineteen-year old girl who has grown up during hard, poverty-stricken times in Dublin, Ireland. Eveline dreams of a life better than the one her dead mother had lived. In search for her happiness, Eveline plans to escape from her current life with her lover, a sailor named Frank, to start a new life full of promise and hope in Buenos Ayres. However, minutes before Eveline is to board the ship with Frank for Buenos Ayres, she is reminded of the promise she had made to her dying mother to keep the family and home together for as long as she could. Eveline is overwhelmed with the guilt she feels for leaving her father and two younger siblings and the fear she has of leaving Dublin to risk something she does not know. Frank pleads with her to come as the ship leaves dock, but she stands there paralyzed and looks at him with blank eyes.
             Joyce begins his story with Eveline sitting by a window in her home. She could smell "the odor of dusty cretonne" (3) from the curtains, and a "yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium" (4). The room was full of "familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years" (4). Eveline seems trapped in a dull life that never changes, but it is the only life she knows. She feels that it is her duty to live her mother's life because she promised her dying mother she would "keep the home together as long as she could" (6). Eveline even says, "It was hard work – a hard life – but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life" (5). She tries to make herself believe that life isn't that bad, but in reality she is trapped by fear – the fear to change.
             As the story comes to a close, Eveline is getting ready to board the ship to Buenos Ayres with Frank when "she gr...