Some people walk through life freely and successfully while grasping opportunities. Others of us, like Eveline, trip through hardships and get off-balanced by relationships or tragic events we don't foresee. In his short story "Eveline," James Joyce introduces us to the life of a young woman named Eveline. Given the opportunity to finally start a new life with Frank, the man she likes, from a life of horror, she doesn't seem to stand a chance to leave everything behind. What appears to be an imperceptive decision; Eveline, a young confused woman, seems to not know what she wants from life. In order to understand Eveline's decision in settling back to the life she has always known, we have to analyze some factors that may have prevented her from leaving. .
The first reason comes from the attachment to her environment. At a glance the idea of attachment does not make sense because Eveline lives with her abusive father who constantly accuses her of stealing and threatens her with beatings. He demands money from her all of the time while she is juggling jobs as a shop worker and a nanny. Who would want to live that way their whole life? She then gives us an impression of her home being old, raggedy, and dusty, giving us the idea that she is tired of living there. "She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odor of dusty cretonne. She was tired." This describes how Eveline feels about her life; she is not happy, she is tired, and she hopes for something new. However, while in the debate of her leaving, she reminisces about the past, "Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from." Joyce explains that she sees the familiar objects as home and how the objects have aged over time rather than her wanting something new.