Deconstructing the One-Way Sign in James Joyce's "Eveline"

Abstract

<p>Many critics concur that Eveline, the female protagonist in James Joyce’s story of the same name, is a victim of male dominance and that her decision to remain in Dublin, instead of fleeing with Frank to Buenos Ayres, is a product of that dominance. Forms of that power have been interpreted as “family bonds,” domestic obligation, and an “internalized . . . sense of self as ‘scene’” as if Eveline were part of a backdrop in an all-male film cast (Tolentino 74; Henke 17; Conboy 410). Earl G. Ingersoll not only states that “Eveline is a subject as incapable of the [Joycean] epiphanic experience as is conceivable,” but he also interprets the concluding scene at the docks as possibly a fabricated fantasy that never escapes the confines of Eveline’s mind (61-62). Her effeminate passivity is evident through her silence, her battle with familial obligation to her apathetic father, and her initial belief that salvation and safety are attainable through marriage. Critics argue that these constraints chain her to the old and keep her from the new. Yet ironically, the product of Eveline’s silence and reflection is in fact her ability to break down the traditional nineteenth-century binary oppositions associated with gender and power. Only then is she able to both recognize and resist male dominance.</p><p>This research project won the first annual Wright State University Friends of the Library Undergraduate Research Award on May 3, 2011. The research project essay is included in the documents with this record.</p>