“Eveline” is an unusually short story, at under 2,000 words long. It is written from a third-person omniscient point of view, meaning that the story’s narrator is separate from the protagonist Eveline but has access to her thoughts. The story’s style is characterized by stream of consciousness, a technique common in early 20th-century Modernist writing that attempts to capture the rhythm of a character’s thoughts, often through the use of disorienting pacing and inventive or unusual language. “Eveline” is structured around Eveline’s evolving thoughts and emotions, with the story seeming to flow from her thoughts. This stylistic choice allows the reader to access her inner conflict about whether to stay in Dublin or leave for a new, married life in Buenos Ayres with Frank.
In addition, sentence structure and word choice are both important aspects of Joyce’s writing style in “Eveline.” In the opening paragraph of the story, for example, Joyce uses passive voice when introducing Eveline:
“Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired.”
The verb “was” is repeated twice in the same sentence and a third time in the following sentence. It is significant that Joyce introduces Eveline in this way. All three verbs are written in the passive rather than active tense. In describing Eveline with her head “leaned against” the window rather than “Eveline leaned,” it is as if she is a static object rather than a person. In this sense, Eveline does not act; it is as if she is frozen. The presence of dust—a symbol of death—on the cretonne further emphasizes a sense of lifelessness in Eveline. This language importantly foreshadows the final image of her “passive, like a helpless animal” at the end of the story. Leading up to that final image, Joyce uses specific words to foreshadow her paralysis and suggest that she is fated to death:
“[Eveline] answered nothing. She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress, she prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty […] Her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer.”
Joyce first describes Eveline by saying she is silent: she “answer[s] nothing.” Using the words “pale” and “cold,” Joyce describes Eveline as if she were a dead body, lifeless and still. Moreover, the word “silent” in the final sentence echoes the silence in Eveline “answering nothing” after she sees the boat that will take her to Buenos Ayres. The repetition of this idea is intentional: it emphasizes Eveline’s inability to speak in the moment and, all in all, reflects her larger inability to make a choice. Although at this moment Eveline is alive, Joyce implies that death (whether literal or a more figurative mental or spiritual death) is near.
