What is the interior monologue of Eveline in "Eveline" by James Joyce?

Although "Eveline" is written in third-person, James Joyce employs a technique known as free-indirect discourse, which allows the narrator to channel the title character's thoughts and emotions. Joyce employs this technique throughout Dubliners.

In "Eveline," the title character is struggling with her decision to leave her father in Dublin so she can run off with Frank, a sailor who has promised to marry her and move her to his home in Argentina. However, Eveline...

Although "Eveline" is written in third-person, James Joyce employs a technique known as free-indirect discourse, which allows the narrator to channel the title character's thoughts and emotions. Joyce employs this technique throughout Dubliners.

In "Eveline," the title character is struggling with her decision to leave her father in Dublin so she can run off with Frank, a sailor who has promised to marry her and move her to his home in Argentina. However, Eveline is duty bound to her father and paralyzed by her mother's final words to her, which roughly translated from their Gaelic, are "at the end of pleasure is pain." So, it's with these in mind that Joyce taps into the internal monologue that Eveline experiences. 

The entire story consists of two settings. The first setting is where this interior monologue occurs as Eveline is sitting at her window "watching the evening invade the avenue." She sits pondering her life in Dublin, from her childhood, to her home and whether or not she made the right decision "to go away." She thinks about the things her home in Dublin with her father provide her, such as "shelter and food." However, she thinks of the bad things about Dublin: her abusive boss and her abusive father. She imagines what it would be like to be a married woman in "Buenos Ayres." She says that with her marriage, "People would treat her with respect then." Finally, she remembers her mother's final words and decides she must escape. Frank, she believes "would save her."

In the second setting, the narrator no longer uses free indirect discourse and removes himself, for the most part, from Eveline. The narrator describes how Eveline didn't leave with Frank, but stayed on the dock "like a helpless animal."