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Irish Diaspora
James Joyce’s “Eveline” tells the tale of nineteen-year-old Eveline Hill who is grappling with whether to stay in Dublin or to escape to Buenos Aires with her lover, Frank. Eveline is miserable in Dublin. She feels trapped by monotony and routine and she characterizes her home city as being dull and lifeless. She also feels constricted by Ireland’s narrow expectations of women and is terrified of becoming an unhappy pillar of the domestic sphere like her mother. Eveline is not the only Dubliners protagonist who feels suffocated in Dublin. Insularity, the ignorance of or lack of interest in cultures, ideas, or peoples outside one's own experience, is a recurring theme throughout the collection of short stories. Ireland is an island, making it an excellent symbol for isolation and a lack of interest in outside cultures and ideas. Throughout Dubliners, more ambitious characters bemoan Ireland’s status as being cut off from the rest of the world such as Mrs. Kearney from “A Mother,” Mr. Duffy from “A Painful Case,” the narrator of “Araby,” and, of course, Eveline.
Eveline’s salvation arrives in the form of Frank, who charms Eveline with his exotic tales of foreign ports and adventures outside the constraints of Irish life. Frank is literally and metaphorically Eveline’s ticket out of Dublin because he wants Eveline to travel with him to Buenos Aires and marry him there. Frank is a sailor who first left Ireland as a deck boy on a ship on the Allan Line to Canada. The Allan Line began in 1819 and was a shipping route between Scotland and Montreal. While deck boys would typically earn a pound a month, it was possible to climb the ladder and make your fortune overseas. This is the case for Frank, who had “fallen on his feet” in Buenos Aires. Frank may be a fictional character, but his story reflects the real lives of millions of Irish citizens who immigrated to other countries in pursuit of a better life. The Library of Congress estimates that as many as 4.5 million Irish citizens immigrated to America alone between 1820 and 1930.
The diaspora of Irish people to other countries is an integral part of Irish history and is reflected in many prominent pieces of Irish literature including Dubliners. The subject of Irish immigration was a particularly personal issue for Joyce himself because he, like many of his fellow citizens, left Ireland. Joyce left Dublin for the first time in 1902 when he moved to Paris after his university graduation to pursue a medical degree, but he quickly turned his attention to writing. He returned to Dublin in 1903, where he met his future wife, Nora Barnacle, the following year. From then on, Joyce made his home in other countries. From 1905 to 1915 he and Nora lived in Rome and Trieste, Italy, and from 1915 to 1919 they lived in Zurich, Switzerland. Between World War I and World War II, they lived in Paris. They returned to Zurich in 1940, where Joyce died in 1941. Joyce left Dublin because he, like Eveline, felt stifled by Irish culture, particularly in regards to Irish politics and religion. In his semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce famously refers to Ireland as an “old sow that eats her farrow.”
