Eveline (Characters)

Characters

Frank

Frank is a sailor planning to move to Buenos Aires and take his lover Eveline with him. He has told Eveline he intends to marry her, which may well be the case, but Frank is a mysterious character and there is some implication that his intentions are devious. He started his sailing career on a trade route associated with exile and full of stories about infamously savage tribes from Argentina. Also, "going to Buenos Aires" was a slang term for prostitution, and the night boat to Liverpool may have been a reference to the mythological journey over the Styx river to the pagan underworld — both of which are implications that Frank might have no intention of marrying his lover, but instead is planning bring her into a situation she will find immoral.

However, Frank is also described as "kind, manly, open-hearted" and is set up as Eveline's only way to happiness, so he may indeed have only the best intentions in helping his lover to escape from her abusive household and difficult job. In fact, the new lands and adventure into the outside world that Frank represents are perhaps the only hopeful elements of the story, especially considering Eveline's very bleak future at home. But Frank's character is left obscure so that, like Eveline, the reader is left nervous and guessing at what life would be like with him.

Miss Gavan

Eveline's supervisor at the "Stores," which sells a variety of dry goods in south-central Dublin, Miss Gavan nags and embarrasses Eveline, especially when other people are around. She is probably a Quaker because the "Stores" was owned by Quakers, a religious group known for being pacifist and often associated with trades people in Ireland.

Ernest Hill

Eveline's favorite older brother, Ernest, is dead at the time of the story. Eveline remembers him being too grown up to play with the other children in the field next to their house.

Eveline Hill

Eveline is the protagonist of the story; her psychology is profoundly developed and the majority of the story takes place in her mind. A complex and conflicted person, she leads a hardworking life taking care of her family and tending a shop in Dublin. Her main problem is her abusive father, who has been threatening, berating, and beating her, and she must decide whether to abandon him and her family for her own happiness. Her father has forbidden her from seeing her lover, a sailor named Frank, but Eveline has managed to sneak away and keep up the affair, to the point that he has promised to marry her and sail with her to a new life.

Tortured by the promise she made her mother to keep the home together as long as she could, and unsure of whether to leave her father, who will miss her, Eveline is trying to decide whether to attempt to "live" and be happy with her lover. She expresses some subtle doubts about Frank when she reflects that she had merely "begun to like him" and that he will only "perhaps" give her love, but this does not seem to be the major issue in her debate with herself. Eveline is principally concerned about her "duty" and her role within her family.

Although her name connotes the idea of a "fallen" woman, as does the concept of going to Buenos Aires, Eveline seems to be a rather modest and prudent person. She does the housework and the shopping, works faithfully at her job, and could be said to live in the image of her mother, in a life of "commonplace sacrifices." On the surface this term implies the difficult job of the person holding the family together. Eveline also thinks in a manner common to victims, justifying her father's abuse with three random acts of benevolence she remembers.

The last scene of the story renders Eveline's character rather enigmatic at the same time as it penetrates the deepest parts of her psychology. Unable to leave and petrified to return, Eveline is revealed to be a torn, devastated person by her difficult life and rigid value system. Like her mother before her, she is resigned to an abusive household that will, as we learn from her "palpitations" due to her father's violence, lead to her own nervous breakdown.

Harry Hill

Harry is the older brother to whom Eveline has written one of the letters she is holding during her scene of reflection. He works as a church decorator, lives somewhere in the countryside south of Dublin (which comprises most of Ireland), and regularly sends money to his sister. Harry and Ernest used to shield Eveline from their abusive father because he would "go for" them first, but now that Harry is living elsewhere and Ernest is dead, there is no one to protect her.

Mr. Hill

Mr. Hill is Eveline's abusive father. He has regularly beaten his wife and children in the past, and as he gets older he is becoming increasingly prone to violence towards Eveline. With her mother and older siblings gone, she is likely to take all of the abuse herself.

Eveline has a confusion of memories about her father; first she remembers him "hunting in" the children from their playing field with a walking stick, which is a rather worrisome image itself, and then she remembers in depth all of his increasing abuse. She finds it very difficult to get money from him (for the family shopping) because he says she wastes all of his "hard-earned" money, and he threatens to abuse her just "for her dead mother's sake." By this he could be referring to any number of real or imagined faults, including what seems to be a certain amount of time living out of wedlock, which was a major taboo in the Catholic community. Eveline also remembers two isolated examples of how her father is sometimes "very nice": when he read her a ghost story and toasts her, and when he made his children laugh at a picnic.

These positive memories are very tenuous evidence of Mr. Hill's good character. From the comment that he is usually "fairly bad of a Saturday night," it can be inferred that he has a drinking problem, and the fact that he would miss Eveline in his old age suggests he might be insecure and bitter about getting older.

Mrs. Hill

Eveline's mother was abused by Mr. Hill and treated with disrespect by the community, as becomes clear when Eveline muses that, unlike her mother, she will be married and therefore treated with respect. It is likely that Eveline's mother had an affair with Mr. Hill out of wedlock and later married him, but this is not explicitly mentioned in the story. Her life was one of sacrifices, according to Eveline's musings, probably for her children's sake, but it seems that these sacrifices and her husband's abuse eventually drove her crazy and to her death.

Mrs. Hill is particularly important for her somewhat conflicting dying advice to her daughter. Eveline has promised to "keep the home together as long as she could," but her repeated last words in "foolish insistence" seem to contradict the life of martyrdom that she has recommended to her daughter. "Derevaun Seraun," whether it means "worms are the only end," "the end of song is raving madness," something else in corrupt Gaelic, or nothing at all, inspires Eveline's terrified epiphany that she must escape. In fact, it is possible that Mrs. Hill's "final craziness" actually results in her most coherent advice, since keeping the family together seems very likely to drive Eveline to the same bitter end as her mother.

The Priest

Mr. Hill's school friend, the priest is only present in "Eveline" as a yellowing photograph on the wall. He has gone to Melbourne, which was known for its association with exiled Irish criminals as well as with the Irish Catholic priesthood.