The mood of “Eveline” is overall apprehensive and melancholic. The titular character, Eveline, must decide whether or not to escape her confining circumstances in Dublin for a life in Buenos Ayres with her love interest, a sailor named Frank. The story follows Eveline’s evolving thoughts and emotions leading up to the moment she must make this decision. As such, the mood throughout the story—its general atmosphere—reflects Eveline’s anticipation, fear, and desperation. For example, after the sound of organ music triggers a memory from Eveline’s past, she:
“[...] stood in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She [Eveline] must Escape! Frank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness.”
The words “terror” and “escape” capture Eveline’s panic and anxiety that something bad will happen to her if she stays, creating a feeling of apprehension in the reader. Death and the looming threat of violence from Eveline’s father also contribute to the story’s uneasy atmosphere. Eveline’s father is first mentioned as she begins to reflect on her childhood. She recalls how, when she played with her siblings and neighbors, her father “used often to hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick.” The word “hunt,” typically used to describe the act of pursuing and killing for sport or food, implies that Eveline’s father was (and likely still is) a violent man. This suggestion of violence is later confirmed when Eveline says her father “had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother’s sake.”
Before Eveline is to board the boat for Buenos Ayres, the story’s mood becomes melancholic. Detailed imagery of the station and boat create an atmosphere of darkness and sadness: the boat is described as a “black mass” and blowing “a long mournful whistle into the mist.” This sense of sorrow all comes to head at the story’s climactic ending, when Eveline is unable to accompany Frank to Buenos Ayres. The fearful imagery in the passage allows readers to empathize with Eveline’s sadness, apprehension, and ultimate paralysis.
