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How is the Catholic Church depicted in "Eveline" from Joyce's Dubliners?
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The Catholic Church in "Eveline" is depicted as a confining and stultifying force. Eveline feels bound by her promises to her mother and God, symbolizing the Church's moralistic demands. These internalized demands prevent her from pursuing a new life with Frank. Joyce critiques the Church for perpetuating a sense of duty and sacrifice that traps Eveline, reflecting Ireland's cultural paralysis.
The Catholic Church is presented as an agent of repression in Eveline. Eveline longs to run off with the sailor Frank and start a new life away from Dublin. She has even made plans to meet him at the dock so they can sail away together. She wants to leave home because she fears her father's temper and tyrannies and dislikes her job as a bullied shop girl.
At the dock, however, her pious dead mother's voice comes to her, saying:
“Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!”
These words mean that pleasure will lead to pain. Torn over whether to stay or go, Eveline prays to God about what she should do, framing the question as what her "duty" is, rather than what God wants her to do. Once the internalized and repressive voices of the church and her mother kick in, it is inevitable that she will stay behind in...
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her constricted Dublin life.
Joyce shows how the church holds women in place, making it psychologically difficult for them to break free.
As Eveline sits at the window, watching "the evening invade the avenue, she reflects upon how the neighborhood once was. Considering her departure, she recalls that she has never learned the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hangs on the wall next to the colored print of the promises she has made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. This beatified French nun (one of the steps to sainthood) who was canonized as a saint in 1920, introduced devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Most Catholic homes, then, had pictures of the Sacred Heart, and a list of promises of domestic security and blessings in life for those who maintain devotion to it and attend Mass regularly.
With the yellowing photograph of the unknown priest, Joyce indicates that the Catholic Church is not a living, thriving part of Eveline's life. Furthermore, since she is the victim of abuse from her father and worries what will become of her little brother if she leaves, there is anything but domestic security and blessings in her life. Therefore, the Catholic religion lack viability and relevance to Eveline. Yet, as a child raised in the rigidity of this religion that Joyce felt caused Irish stagnation, Eveline clings to her Catholic prayer, aware of the promises that she has made to the Blessed Margaret Mary. When she does accompany Frank to the station at the North Wall, she desperately "prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty." But, her religion is no thriving part of her life, and Eveline receives no inspiration. Instead, she is psychologically paralyzed with the pull of "all those commonplace sacrifices" which are part of her tragic Irish-Catholic life.