You always read in books about a perfect love story, but do you ever imagine being in one? Sometimes, you have to choose between your family and someone you love. “Eveline” by James Joyce is a short story about a girl who had to make a decision to either stay with her father or run away to Buenos Aires with Frank. She was just a woman that wanted to live her dreams, but something kept her from going. Eveline is an example of responsible, strong, and reliable woman. Eveline is a responsible nineteen year old woman who knew how to run her own business and take care of the household needs. She took care of her father’s needs too because if she didn’t he would be very aggressive towards her. It was hard to get any kind of money out of her father because he never wanted to spend his own money. Most of the things she needed money for came from her business. “She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly” (Joyce 421). Eveline didn’t just take care of herself, she had to take care of everyone else too. Being nineteen years old and having everything weighing on her shoulders must have been hard for her. She worked and clean so much she often found herself dreaming. If it wasn’t for her being responsible nothing would have got done around the house. Eveline had to run to the store to get dinner on Sundays because her father would come home drunk. It wasn’t a
She has always felt a responsibility to take care of her siblings, earn money to help with finances, and control her father when he was drunk, even taking him home from the bar. Jeannette would try to bring food home for her siblings when she found any extra. At one point she says, “I felt like I was failing Maureen, like I wasn’t keeping my promise that I’d protect her.” (206) In reality, Jeannette should not be the one in charge of protecting her siblings and making sure they have enough food and necessities but she does because her parents don’t. She also feels the need to make extra money because her parents don’t have steady incomes. By the age of thirteen, she was the head of the household for the summer and had a job that paid forty dollars a week. (209, 215) She was making more money than either of her parents and she wasn’t even old enough by law to have a job. Another example of her maturity beyond her age is when Rose Mary makes Jeannette retrieve her father from the bar when he doesn’t come home after a couple of days. (181) This a job that Rose Mary should be doing herself but instead she sends Jeannette so she doesn’t have to deal with
Though Jeannette gave her all to support her family, she did the same for herself without anyone’s support. She understood what it was meant to be poverty at a very young age and realised that she could not have what others did. While Jeannette didn’t have money, she was smart and resourceful to achieve whatever she could for herself. When Jeannette was young, she had already decided that if she wanted to do something for herself, she was going to have to do it herself. An example of this was when she herself to have buckteeth, and promptly said, “I decided to make my own braces,” and she did (Wall 200). In spite of Jeannette being underprivilaged and with less money, she found ways time and time again to succeed.
Her dad carried her away from the hospital without payment, and then her mom permitted her to cook again, moreover she said, “ Getting right back into the saddle” ( Glass Castle 47). Jeanette was not angry at such young age and soon the family had to pack their belongings into bags and “do the skedaddle” as her parents always said. The parents were fleeing from bill collectors. Although Jeanette's father was an alcoholic, he could get work almost anywhere, often in small towns. The family was moving because of these things, she never complained when they did not have enough food. Jeanette always forgave her parents, she understood what they were going through.
Jeannette’s self-reliant behavior is frequently shown through her refusal of help from others. On one trip to retrieve her father from a bar, Jeannette’s father is so drunk that he can no longer walk. Another man offers to drive them home, and
As Jeannette was a child if someone wanted to do something and no one could help and someone would have do it on bye own. Jeannette shows. “I cooked myself some hot dogs. I was hungry, mom was at work painting and no one else was there to fix them for me” (15) Jeannette who is only three at the time conveys what her typical lifestyle is and shows how she doesn’t have a choice on doing and getting help from others.Jeannette never cared learning self sufficiency at a young age was different and never thought anything about it. Next, Jeannette’s mom was a big believer in self reliance even in any kind of living creatures. At a young age she was taught to never rely on anyone and always try to be independent. Jeannette explains. “Mom told us we were actually doing the animals a favor by not allowing them to become dependent on us. That way, if we ever had to leave, they’d be able to get by on their own. Mom liked to encourage self sufficiency in all living creatures” (64) Even at a young age she knew her family was strong on self reliance and always encouraged it even in any living creature her mom still believes it's okay for self sufficiency. Finally, as a child she couldn’t afford many items so she would have to think out of the box and try to do it herself. Jeannette never cared about what other people were thinking of her until kids started making fun of how her teeth looked. Jeannette explained. “I resolved to save up until I could afford braces myself…. I was getting a dollar an hour to babysit. I usually worked five or six hours a week, which meant that I saved every penny I earned, it would take about four years to raise the money. I decided to make my own braces” (201). Jeanette grew up being taught not to care about what other people thinks and just be
In the three stories “Eveline”, “A Rose for Emily”, and “Desiree’s Baby” three single women go about love in three different ways. Their struggles for love are similar; the decisions they made you will not believe. One thing you can say about all the women is their poor love lives. With their fathers in their way, the women find it hard to find love. Love is a four letter word that everyone wants, but some never get to experience the happiness. While Eveline, Miss Emily, and Desiree have controlling fathers, they want love; one walked away from her happiness, one kills for it, and another kills herself.
However, with her alcoholic dad who rarely kept a job and her mother who suffered mood swings, they had to find food from her school garbage or eat expired food they had previously when they had the slightest bit of money. In addition, when bills and mortgage piled up, they would pack their bags and look for a new home to live in, if they could even call it a stable home, since they would be on the move so often. Jeanette needed a dad who wouldn’t disappear for days at a time, and a mom that was emotionally stable, but because she didn’t have that, she grew up in an environment where she would get teased or harassed for it. Jeanette suffered so much, that even at one point, she tried convincing her mother to leave her father because of the trouble he had caused the family already. A child should be able to depend on their parents for food and to be there for them when they need it, and when that part of a child’s security is taken away, it leaves them lost and on their own, free and confused about what to do next.
In “A Rose for Emily”, Charles Faulkner used a series of flashbacks and foreshadowing to tell Miss Emily’s story. Miss Emily is an interesting character, to say the least. In such a short story of her life, as told from the prospective of a townsperson, who had been nearly eighty as Miss Emily had been, in order to tell the story from their own perspective. Faulkner set up the story in Mississippi, in a world he knew of in his own lifetime. Inspired by a southern outlook that had been touched by the Civil War memory, the touch of what we would now look at as racism, gives the southern aroma of the period. It sets up Miss Emily’s southern belle status and social standing she had been born into, loner or not.
The parent’s decision to act freely and have no worries in life causes the family’s struggle, and leads them to poverty. The struggle for the family is shown in the quote, “Mom's salary created a whole new set of problems” (Walls.p.48). What this means is that money would solve all the family's problems, but it doesn't—mostly because the dad takes all the money. Later on in the memoir Jeannette says, “Mom decided Maureen
The father cared more about where he was going to get his next drink or his next pack of smokes verses holding down a steady job to provide food or a non-leaking roof over their heads. Instead of paying bills he would just leave or live without power etc. Rose Mary was educated and had the certification to teach, yet she hates working and only wanted to be a famous artist. She did work when she had too but instead of using her money to provide food for these kids she would buy a little here and there. But she mainly used her income to buy more art supplies.
Her father's rampant drinking and inability to hold a job, coupled with her mother's lack of responsibility causes Jeannette to inwardly question her role in society.
A baby is born and on that day a parent makes a promise to take care of that child until the day the parents die. Unfortunately, that promise is broken once that child is 18 some early as 16 because they can legally get a job. In "The Glass Castle" Walls parents taught their kids to be self-sufficient at a very young age to reply on themselves. Being self-sufficient
Focusing upon love as an obsession, it can be thought that the characters in “Araby” by James Joyce and Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton developed a case of obsessive love disorder. Obsessive love disorder is an extreme form of love that turns into an obsession over time, but sometimes, it could never have started from love at all.
James Joyce’s “Eveline” is a short story about a nineteen-year-old Eveline, who contemplates abandoning a life she is accustomed to and moving to a distant land with a man she hardly knows. In one hand she holds the weight of uncertain happiness, in the other, inevitable misery. Eveline needs to make a choice between two contrasting lives; one in which she is a servant to her father, in other, a respected wife. Following her mother’s death, Eveline assumes the role of a parent and inherits all the chores accompanying it. She works hard at home and “the Stores” (Joyce 74), but for all her troubles, Eveline gets little respect in return. Now with one brother dead and other away on business, she is left alone to keep the family together and
Eveline was a female that was brought up in a poor area of Dublin, Ireland. As with all underprivileged areas around the world things were harsh. There was a higher importance placed on morals and values. Eveline’s job was to care for her father and the house after her mother passed. A promise she made to her mother on her deathbed, and promises are to be kept. She also had two children that she oversaw caring for. Her responsibilities were routine, comfortable, and safe. There is nothing that the human race likes more than routine. There is a comfort that comes with knowing how