eveline

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The early twentieth- century opened with a sense of emancipation for some and apprehension for others. The freedom from the previous moral values and restraints of the Victorian era together with the impact of Industrialisation transformed urban life, and improved working and living conditions for many people. The development of railways and the construction of new housing encouraged people to migrate to the developing cities to enjoy a better standard of living.
In considering, the central importance of emancipation to the texts we are studying. In disagreement with this statement, I have chosen to discuss ‘Eveline,’ ‘Dubliners’ (Joyce, 1914.) In agreement, the selected texts are Langston Hughes ‘The Trumpet player,’ and ‘Pushcart man,’ and ‘To Brooklyn Bridge’ (1933) Heart Crane.
The first decade of the twentieth century saw the intimate city of Dublin in a period of stagnation. Legislation had merged Ireland with Great Briton, resulting in the loss of Dublin’s parliament. Consequently, the city was a mixture of extremism and conservatism. Dublin did display a limited degree of modernity, but at a slower rate than other European cities, mainly due to Dublin retaining links with its rural surroundings. As a small city, Dublin preserved its intimacy and neighbourly feel, with people knowing your business, and sharing common interests, both socially and politically.
Restrictive routines and repetitive, mundane everyday life depicts the characters of Joyce Dubliners, despite their longing for emancipation and to escape to a better life, they are instead perishing in their own predicaments, trapped in the frustration of routine, paralysed from acting decisively, or consciously, as they have not being enlightened by any epiphanic re...

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... will replicate the same wasted life of her mother, and despite this concrete chance of emancipation, she feels powerless, paralysed, and unable to take this step forward. Eveline, is weak, and vulnerable, and unable to defy her father because of his dominant patriarchal authority. Eveline is destined to become an old-maid, forced to look after her abusive, aging, father, like so many other women in Dublin at the time. Through Eveline, Joyce is portraying that Dubliners, especially women in the early twentieth century would not go very far, will not be transformed, or emancipated, despite their dreams, paralysis succeeds, and people are trapped. Eveline is unable to fulfil her dream of escape, and rendered a ‘passive and helpless animal,’ doomed to a life of domesticity, as she watches her lover board the ship amongst hundreds of other people. (Joyce 2000.p.26)

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