Eveline Decides To Stay

In "Eveline" by James Joyce, we find paralysis and an epiphany experienced by the main character, Eveline. Eveline appears to be a young woman, although we do not get an exact age. She lives with her father, in the house she has lived in since childhood, and she is desperate for change. In the starting paragraph, the narrator says, "She was tired." Which obviously translates to having a tedious life made by routine and same surroundings. Eveline is paralyzed by her surroundings, although now she strives for happiness with Frank, a sailor that plans to take her to Buenos Ayres and make her his wife. Eveline's father is one of the persons that keeps Eveline paralyzed, he infiltrates fear in her, we see this when the narrator says, "she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father's violence"(49). But even if she feared him she depended totally on her father, especially in the monetary side. She was not able to do what she wanted, but instead what her father wanted her to do. In addition, her dead mother had her paralyzed. The narrator says, "Strange that it should come that very night to remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could" (50). This promise to her mother had her thinking the night before leaving with Frank. More than a promise, it was a sacrifice because if she decided to keep it, she would loose the opportunity of a happy future. Overall her surroundings were part of her paralysis, because the people and the place that surrounded her held her back from doing what she wanted. Finally, when the day to depart arrived, she was praying to God to direct her. She was there, about to leave but still not sure if her decision was the correct one. Probably still in her mind was the house to which she had great fondness, her father and the promise she made to her mother. There, in that moment she has a epiphany, a realization that even if she left the things that made her unhappy, they would follow her and make her unhappy wherever she went. The multiple things that in her life that added to her paralysis led her to have an epiphany that revealed her that she could not escape the life that she was so tired about. Eveline, in her need of an escape from a life of routine and fear made her believe that she loved Frank, and when she was about to leave and looked at him, she finds a man that she does not know. Then comes the realization that she cannot leave because she does not love him and because she cannot walk away from her current life as easily. In her decision to stay, she decided to remain paralyzed as well.

Eveline's paralysis is similar to Emily's, from "A Rose For Emily". Both women were paralyzed by their way of life, also by the house in which they lived in, a house they do not want to leave because is part of who they are. In both cases there was a father figure, a father that held their daughter back, not giving them a chance to do what they wanted. Both were paralyzed by family and by the place where they lived.

Lucy's Story

Lucy standing at the back door looking at the dead dogs.

David will never know. He will never understand anything of what happened to me. When those men came here it seemed really strange because not many people come this way. I never thought that the reason they were here was because they wanted to harm us. This had never happened to me. So much brutality experienced in just a few hours. If i had not believed the story the man told us, if I had stayed my ground, what would have happened? Maybe we would be dead, like my darlings, my innocent dogs. I feel emptiness in me, as if they took everything away from me. So much hate infiltrated into me by those rapists, a feeling I had never felt before, is now in me. This feeling is between fear, realization and emptiness all together. A hate against me so shocking that I do not know if I will be able to forget. I do not feel hate towards them, in a way I am starting to understand now, how much, people suffered because of us, to the extent of making them hate us this way, to make them want to harm us. However, don't they have the right to do it? We were the ones who started harming them in their own land, now they are just doing what we once did to them. This is the price I am paying now, it has happened and I cannot take it back, the only thing I can do is accept it. David will not accept it, but there is no reason to be mad for what they did to me when he does something similar with women. He calms his needs and then looks for another one to use. Either way, this is not about David, this is about me, there is no point in making an accusation. It is preferable to keep this to myself, and hopefully with time this emptiness will vanish and everything will go back to how it was before the incident. I will never leave this farm; this is a land I am not able to give up, I have to face what happened here and not run away, even if what happened today may happen again.

Analysis

Lucy's thoughts through the novel are very confusing. The fact that she does not tell David what she really thinks has the reader in the dark. However, I imagine that after the attack Lucy made her mind. While she was alone after the attack, she must have thought about it a lot and finally make her decision to stay and in a way justify what they did to her. What proves that her decision was well thought out before letting David out of the bathroom is when she says, "You tell what happened to you, I tell what happened to me (99)." She was not going to let David say what he never saw, and what he would never understand. Also when she says, "Why should I live here without paying?(158)". She brings us back to the thought that this would be her sacrifice in order to stay, that if being raped was a way of paying what before African people suffered she would do it. Lucy somehow thinks that her father would never understand her situation for the simple fact that he is a man. Lucy makes a remark against David in page 158. She tells him that he must know that some men when having sex reach pleasure when they show hate towards the woman, using her and marking her forever. But David avoids what she says, which make us connect David to the men, they are not exactly the same but have acted toward women in an improper way to have their needs taken care of. David does not like Lucy's decisions.. Lucy is very comprehensive, passive, and docile, but also a strong independent woman. She is what David likes a woman, but cannot handle seeing it in her daughter. Lucy even lets Pollux the young man who raped her live next to her house, and says absolutely nothing. She appears to follow her decisions and try to forget the situation she was in, in a more logic and comprehensive way, even if not even the reader understands how she could let it go so easily.

A Changed Man

The Change in David Lurie's attitude was a mix of his new country life and the violent attack he and his daughter suffered in the farm. After being burned, his face was not the handsome one of a 52 year old man. A man who was used to attract women and taking them to bed. His face turned repulsive, a face even kids would be scared of. The fact that he will never be able to have the same power over women has changed him deeply. Women now see David as a weak man, including the ones in town, his daughter Lucy and Bev. The situation he encountered was very unfortunate because he could not defend himself or even protect his daughter from the attackers, but the excuse people in town made for him was that he was too old and no longer capable of fighting men younger than him. This might have had hurt David's ego, but now inside him he starting to recognize that he is getting old, a thought that had never crossed his mind when he was still at the city. In the city he would never have changed. Not only because he lived in commodity but because he was around "temptation". Also because if he had never experienced the attack he would still be the Casanova he has always been. To change who he has always been, he had to experience a situation that would give a radical turn to his way of life and that would make him see that life is different from what he was accustomed. In page 121 from "Disgrace", the narrator says. "If he came for anything, it was to gather himself , gather his forces. Here he is losing himself day by day." David is no longer the man he used to be. Not the handsome, not the young, and not the Casanova. The controlling David has dissipated. Before, when he was still living in the city he would be in control of the women he was involved with, but now in the farm he follows what Lucy says. When the narrative voice says, "He gives the page to Lucy to approve"(121). It shows a perspective of David's new personality after the attack. Before the attack he never would have asked a woman for permission of any sort, instead he would do his will, and he expected it to be followed. David's manly and controlling side is getting weaker, and he is starting to let women tell him what to do, which can be very surprising because at the beginning of the novel we knew a very different David Lurie. The country and the attack, a fusion of a place and an event has changed David, but it did not changed him in order for him to be a better man, but one that starts to inspire pity.