The Destruction Of Eveline In James Joyce's Dubliners

In James Joyce’s short story “Eveline,” the title character lost her mother when she was young; as a result, she promised her mother that she would keep house for her brothers and her father, no matter how difficult it became. Her mother’s death was the turning point for her father, leading him to become more harsh and violent than when she still lived. After this transformation, Eveline’s brothers left her to live alone with her abusive father, wilting underneath his violence and anger, but she did not leave. These events emphasize her lack of courage to leave, but there are many other events that discourage Eveline from leaving her home.

An early example is Eveline’s memory of her mother’s last days.Her mother became ill when Eveline was

young, the illness culminating in possible dementia, since in her last hours she started to chant, “Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!” Her chant means, “the end of pleasure is pain,” and those words control Eveline’s life from the moment she heard them until the last glimpse of her leaving Frank before they can run away together. As her mother’s death is a traumatic event for Eveline, the phrase lingers in her brain and subconsciously influences her actions. She shies away from any possible happiness because her mother warned her of the pain at the end of every pleasure, and Eveline does not want to experience any pain worse than what she has already felt. Even when she is offered a chance at happiness with Frank in his home in Buenos Ayres, Eveline eventually refuses it since she does not care to discover is her pleasure will end in pain as her mother’s did. While the phrase “Derevaun Seraun” does not echo in the narrative, it does echo throughout Eveline’s life, its lasting effects embedding themselves deep within her psyche alongside mental and physical scars from her father’s abuse.
In Joyce’s short story, Eveline elaborates little on her dad besides how he became much nicer as he aged.

One meaning for this is that Eveline feels that her father’s kindness is a strange concept, and, therefore, she needs to make note of it. Following that conclusion, she never explicitly tells the reader that her father is abusive, but, since she does not know another way to live, it is unnecessary. Eveline does state that she lives in fear of her father’s violence and that she does not want to be treated as her mother was. This implies that her father is not only abusive to his children, but to his wife as well. Whether he physically or verbally abused Eveline’s mother, the author does not state, but Eveline experiences both sides of her father’s anger, with the physical abuse lessening as she becomes older. Her father does threaten Eveline with the way he treated her mother, but he tends to stay with his accusations of gambling and stupidity instead of resorting to hitting her as he would her brothers. Even with all the violence, Eveline never leaves for a better life, though Frank offers one far away from her father; this could be because she has been passive her whole life in fear of any punishment her father would give

her.
Abuse victims, like Eveline, often have feelings of misplaced guilt - they think that they are at fault for being abused, instead of their abusers being responsible for abusing them. Eveline exhibits passivity to receive as little punishment as possible, a reaction that points towards underlying guilt at being the cause of her father’s ire. She feels as though she should do no wrong in an effort to win her father’s apathy or ignorance. Since she is the only one of her siblings still living with her father, she feels like it is her responsibility to take care of him. If one of her brothers were still at home, she would not bear the brunt of her father’s anger, but Eveline could not ask her brother to give up his happiness to protect her from their father. Another common thought amongst abuse victims is that the abusers, in a position of power over the victims, are always right; Eveline’s father controls her life, her money, and her fleeting moments of happiness. In the society Eveline and her father inhabit, men are in charge of nearly every option outside of the home. As a young woman, Eveline barely finds a job to help keep her family afloat, but she must return every week to her father with her paycheck in hand, where he fights her over the objects she will buy. Eveline cannot even leave her home unless she leaves in secret, showing that her father controls her. The reason that Eveline eventually decides to stay with her father is that she made a promise to her dying mother that she would care for him for the rest of her life, and the abuse to which he subjects her does not change the fact that she cannot find her courage to break her promise in exchange for a brighter future.
Eveline clearly lacks the courage to abandon her responsibilities to her father, but there are also deep-seated fears in her mind from when her mother lay dying, and far after that event. The story that Joyce wrote portray Eveline in an indecisive light, but, in reality, she fights her deepest fears for a long enough time that she almost runs away with Frank. Unfortunately, her fears push her back at the last feasible moment, leading her away from future happiness and back to the life she had always known: the little brown house she shares with her father.