James Joyce's Life Challenges Represented in 'Eveline'

In a writer’s life, their personal experiences often heavily impact their stories. James Joyce, a writer from Ireland in the early 1900’s, is one of many experiences, these had an immense causatum on his writing. Joyce was a very passionate writer, his stories predominantly described his most personal life impacting experiences. Joyce wrote stories about his love life, family and challenges. Challenges concerning abuse and the feeling of being cemented between two ambitions. In Joyce’s “Eveline” the titled character finds herself in a difficult situation of being fearful of her abusive father and deciding whether to keep a promise she made to a close one, or leave to go away with her lover. Throughout “Eveline” by James Joyce, the title character goes through several challenges involving, abuse as a child and being pulled away from love, which are very similar to experiences that Joyce encountered in his own life.

Being born in a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, in the early 1880’s, James A. A. Joyce had a very stereotypical life. Joyce had eleven siblings, nine of which survived, and all hated John Joyce, Joyce’s father. Joyce’s family was not perfect; for example, “his father was an alcoholic who drove the family into poverty, his mother was a martyr for her husband and children” (Gleed 5). John Joyce was not a bad father, he was just subordinate and made some bad decisions. John Joyce’s unsatisfactory financial planning and decision making began to damage his family; John Joyce grew more and more violent and abusive, “But it seems that he never hurt his son James, who … ‘got along easily’ with his father”. Although Joyce was very impacted by his father’s violence as shown in his writing, he had a personal connection with him that none of his siblings had. John Joyce’s actions became a bit deplorable to family and friend’s. This provided inspiration for some conflicts present in “Eveline”

In the story, the title character’s life is very similar to Joyce’s. The story begins with Eveline sitting by a window reliving her childhood. This quickly led to memories of her abusive father, very closely relating to Joyce’s life. The titled character talk about how as a child, her father was a scary, and abusive man; and how, “Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father’s violence” (Joyce 2). Not only did she feel threatened by her father, she felt as she would never get the respect her mother did. This has a strong affinity to Joyce’s life, John Joyce became so abusive it got to the point where he was not the same person. This situation escalated to the point where, “he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother’s sake” (Joyce 3). Eveline’s mother’s death had a huge toll on her life; they were very close and Eveline looked up to her mom a lot. The feeling of being intimidated led Eveline to be absent in her home. She started sneaking around with a young man named Frank.

After meeting Frank, Eveline felt trapped. Frank is sailor that gave Eveline many opportunities in life. He offered to change the world; for Eveline to leave everything behind and sail a boat with him across the ocean, where they would build a family. She did not know what to say or do, “Eveline feels trapped and conflicted. She had promised her dying mother to do what was necessary to keep the family together, but she now… has met a young sailor, Frank”. Frank comes out as a really nice guy, but Eveline’s dad did not like him. Eveline felt as that moving with Frank would be the best choice for her, yet she couldn’t decide because of the promise she had made to her mother. Thus, Frank, “would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness. Frank would take her in his arms” (Joyce 5). Eveline found herself in a quandary. Throughout the middle to end of the story Eveline questions the future decisions she will have to make. She wanted to be happy, yet she also wanted to keep her promise. This has a big connection to Joyce’s life, after many changes he spent his time traveling.