"Eveline" is a

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...

by the Irish writer

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...

. It was first published in 1904 by the journal '' Irish Homestead'' and later featured in his 1914 collection of short stories ''

Dubliners ''Dubliners'' is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. It presents a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. The stories were writ ...

''. It tells the story of Eveline, a teenager who plans to leave Dublin for Argentina with her "lover". A young woman, Eveline, of about nineteen years of age sits by her window, waiting to leave home. She muses on the aspects of her life that are driving her away, while "in her nostrils was the odor of dusty cretonne". Her mother has died as has her older brother Ernest. Her remaining brother, Harry, is on the road "in the church decorating business". She fears that her father will beat her as he used to beat her brothers and she has little loyalty for her sales job. She has fallen for a sailor named Frank who promises to take her with him to

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

. Before leaving to meet Frank, she hears an

organ grinder A street organ ( or ) played by an organ grinder is a French automatic mechanical pneumatic organ designed to be mobile enough to play its music in the street. The two most commonly seen types are the smaller German and the larger Dutch street or ...

outside, which reminds her of a melody that played on an organ on the day her mother died and the promise she made to her mother to look after the home. At the dock where she and Frank are ready to embark on a ship together, Eveline becomes paralyzed. When Frank is referred to as Eveline's "lover", it's only in the sense that they are romantically involved: the word didn't have its current meaning until the 1920s (OED). Joyce said that his intention in writing the stories was to reveal the "paralysis" suffered by Dubliners of the period. William York Tindall finds Eveline's inability to leave Dublin with Frank to start a new life "the most nearly straightforward expression of paralysis" in the collection.

Hugh Kenner William Hugh Kenner (January 7, 1923 – November 24, 2003) was a Canadian literary scholar, critic and professor. His studies on Modernist literature often analyzed the work of James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Samuel Beckett. His major study of ...

finds Frank's success story improbable, his name to be ironic, and argues that his leaving Eveline alone at the dock shows he didn't intend to take her to Buenos Aires, but rather to seduce her in Liverpool, where the ship is actually headed. It's been noted that "'going to Buenos Ayres' was turn-of-the-century slang for 'taking up a life of prostitution'"; a further possible reading is that Frank does intend to bring Eveline to Buenos Aires, but not to make her his wife.

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* Short stories by James Joyce Short stories set in Dublin (city) 1914 short stories {{1910s-story-stub