Eveline by James Joyce.
I was stumped by this story at first. I was really confused by the ending when I first read it and I thought this story was about how an abused child can have fantasies about escaping that abuse but in reality, she could not because of her psychological attachment to her father beating her. After I read it again, I began to think that she was torn between her love of her father and her passion for getting away from her father. The psychological ideology that she was attached to her father because of two reasons: she realized that without her to care and look after him, her father would not be capable of keeping himself or the house together, also that no matter how abusive or cruel a parent, there is still a mental attachment because they are still a parent. That is my psychologist diagnosis of Eveline.
"No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish!" (Joyce, 222)
Aside from my amateur analysis of Eveline and her mental state, I think that it is important that we all recognize that we all have some secret desire for some way to escape our parents or go off on some long winded adventure. That might have been the intent that the author was trying to get us to see. Not all dreams are as glamorous as they first appear.
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