Student Question
What is Eveline's father's opinion of Frank in James Joyce's "Eveline"?
Quick answer:
Eveline's father forbids her from seeing Frank because he distrusts him, saying, "I know these sailor chaps." This likely stems from both a desire to protect Eveline from a possibly untrustworthy sailor and a fear of losing her support at home. Some interpretations suggest Frank might have had ulterior motives, making the father’s concerns more complex.
In James Joyce's story "Eveline," Eveline's father forbids her from having anything to do with Frank because, as he says, "I know these sailor chaps." There are two ways in which this can be interpreted:
- Eveline's father is attempting to protect his daughter from this "sailor chap."
- Eveline's father would object to anyone who courts his daughter because it would disrupt his lifestyle.
Like all Joyce stories, the answer is probably not simple and is perhaps a combination of the two possibilities.
Eveline's father is dependent on his daughter as he counts on her to keep the household together. He would take all of Eveline's wages and then after spending much of them as he would come home "fairly bad of a Saturday night" (drunk), he relies on the girl to do Sunday's shopping. In addition, he counts on her "to keep the house together and to...
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see that the two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. If Eveline leaves with Frank, all of this stops and her father must figure out how to make it on his own.
However, it's also possible that Eveline's father is right about Frank being one of those "sailor chaps." Throughout Dubliners, the collection of stories that includes "Eveline," sailors are seen as perhaps untrustworthy. In one of the book's previous stories, "An Encounter," the boys go on a boat looking for adventure. In recent analysis of the story, some experts believe it is possible that Frank was not attempting to woo Eveline toward a marriage, but was tricking her into becoming a sex slave.
What does Eveline's father think about Frank in "Eveline"?
Eveline's father did not like Frank, and had forbidden her to see him.
Eveline had been seeing Frank for awhile, and people in the neighborhood knew the two were courting. She had met him one day while visiting at a house on the main road; he had been a lodger at the house and had been standing at the gate, "his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of bronze". Frank began to meet Eveline everyday outside the Stores where she worked, and would see her home. He was a sailor, and would sing romantic songs to her and regale her with "tales of distant countries".
When Eveline's father found out about the courtship, he had forbidden his daughter to have anything to say to her beau, noting cruelly and insinuatingly, "I know these sailor chaps". One day, he actually had a quarrel with Frank, and after that, Eveline "had to meet her lover secretly". It is significant that the sheltered young girl had the courage to defy her father to continue to see the man she loved; she was raised to be so dutiful and obedient that to continue the affair as she did must have taken a great deal of fortitude. In the end, however, Eveline cannot find the strength to change her life and take control of her own destiny. She stands frozen and helpless on the dock as the boat which was to have taken her and Frank to a new land and a new life sails away, ultimately unable to take the steps to sever the ties that bind her.