James Joyce "Eveline" the Principle Essay

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"She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape!" (Joyce). The sudden of this quotation, and its transient fear, is readily apparent. Evelyn is not acting so much as reacting to this memory, and the "terror" it brings her. This quotation is demonstrative of the fright she feels due to her faint-heartedness. She cannot act but react, and it is this same inability to act due to fear (initially induced by her father) that drives her emotions and her behavior.

At the end of the story, Eveline's faint-heartedness causes another spasm of terror that prevents her from escaping her life in Europe and pursuing a better one with her sailor in South America. She is afraid of the unknown, and is afraid of leaving the only life that she has known -- regardless of how little she likes it or how debilitating an effect it produces on her. Whereas just a few hours before, her faint-heartedness invoked the desire in her to flee, now her faint-heartedness makes her stay where she is. A careful analysis of the diction Joyce uses to describe the young woman in these fleeting moments in which she fails to accompany the soldier on the ship indicate that it is the same terror that grips her at this point which gripped her while she thought of her mother on her death bed. The following quotation proves this point. "She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress she prayed…She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal.

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Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition" (Joyce). This quotation demonstrates the fact that Eveline is "cold" with trepidation, a trepidation which whitens her face and ultimately paralyzes her so that she cannot act. This situation is analogous to the one in which she thought about her mother's dying moments. In both instances Eveline cannot act but react; in the passage in this paragraph that reaction makes her stay where she is. She does not desire to do this. She has become frigid to all perceptions except to her overpowering, faint-hearted fear, which is why there is nothing in her face but a manifestation of that fear. This fear prevents the young woman from pursuing a life of happiness outside of her native land.

Eveline is unable to escape the life she led in Europe because of the difficulties she endured there. Those difficulties included the corrupting influence of her violent father, who created a condition of faint-heartedness in her. This condition causes the young woman to become overcome with fear which supersedes her ability to think and act. Instead, she can only react. It is this visceral reaction -- caused by her palpitating fear -- that keeps her from boarding to South America with her sailor-friend.

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