Dec 28, 2009

Eveline | Topics for Further Study

The life of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque can be found in The Lives of the Saints. How does Eveline’s predicament mirror that of Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque? Joyce is always scrupulously accurate with his references. Why might he be linking the heroine with this famous saint?

Sailors appear in many works of Joyce, for example as uncouth and diseased outsiders in Ulysses. In “A Painful Case,” another story in Dubliner’s, Mrs. Sinico is married to a merchant seaman who is never home. Frank, the seaman in “Eveline” is presented as the only positive...