Eveline vs Loius Mallard Essay Example

its significance" Chopin pg. 1. Chopin makes a point to note that Mrs. Mallard receives the news different from what most women would, which is usually denial before finally accepting the news as a truth.

Mrs. Mallard soon locks herself in a room with a window, hurls herself into a large chair and, sobbing, she gazes out at the world bustling around her. Soon, her sobs turn to gasps. She approaches a climactic moment where "her bosom rose and fell tumultuously" (Chopin pg 1) as she embraces freedom and joy in the world and saying under her breath, "free, free, free". Her sister is finally able to get to come out and she's no longer Mrs. Mallard but now Louise, unfortunately, while they are coming down the stairs, her husband comes through the door, obviously very much alive, and Louise drops dead.

Originally appearing in Dubliners, a compilation of vignettes by James Joyce, his short story Eveline is the tale of such an unfortunate individual. Anxious, timid, scared, perhaps even terrified -- all these describe Eveline. She is a frightened, indecisive young woman poised between her past and her future. Eveline loves her father but is fearful of him. She tries to hold onto good memories of her father, thinking "sometimes he could be very nice (Joyce 5)," but has seen what her father has done to her siblings when he would "hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick (Joyce 4). As of late she has begun to feel "herself in danger of her father's violence (Joyce 4). "

Ironically, her father has "begun to threaten her and say what he'd do to her only

for her dead mother's sake (Joyce 5). " Eveline wants a new life but is afraid to let go of her past. She dreams of a place where "people would treat her with respect (Joyce 4)" and when contemplating her future, hopes "to explore a new life with Frank (Joyce 5). When, in a moment of terror she realizes that "she must escape (Joyce 6)," it seems to steel her determination to make a new home for herself elsewhere.

On the other hand, she is comfortable with the "familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided (Joyce 4). " She rationalizes that: "In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her (Joyce 4). " As she reflects on her past she discovers "now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life (Joyce 5). "