NCERT Textbook: Eveline | Class 12 English Kaleidoscope - Humanities/Arts PDF Download

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12/KALEIDOSCOPE
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Eveline Eveline Eveline Eveline Eveline
James Joyce is a major literary figure of the first
quarter of the twentieth century. He is known
for his bold experiments in narrative techniques
in fiction, and Ulysses is his most famous work.
‘Eveline’ is one of the fifteen stories of Dublin
life that form Dubliners, first published in 1914.
It is a sympathetic portrayal of Eveline, who has
within her reach escape from the drudgery of
her life but cannot gather enough courage to
seize it.
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the
avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains
and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She
was tired.
Few people passed. The man out of the last house
passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clacking
along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on
the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there
used to be a field there in which they used to play every
evening with other people’s children. Then a man from
Belfast bought the field and built houses in it—not like
their little brown houses but bright brick houses with
shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play
together in that field—the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns,
little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters.
Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her
father used often to hunt them in and out of the field with
his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep
James Joyce
1882-1941
2024-25
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12/KALEIDOSCOPE
2 2
2 2 2
Eveline Eveline Eveline Eveline Eveline
James Joyce is a major literary figure of the first
quarter of the twentieth century. He is known
for his bold experiments in narrative techniques
in fiction, and Ulysses is his most famous work.
‘Eveline’ is one of the fifteen stories of Dublin
life that form Dubliners, first published in 1914.
It is a sympathetic portrayal of Eveline, who has
within her reach escape from the drudgery of
her life but cannot gather enough courage to
seize it.
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the
avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains
and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She
was tired.
Few people passed. The man out of the last house
passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clacking
along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on
the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there
used to be a field there in which they used to play every
evening with other people’s children. Then a man from
Belfast bought the field and built houses in it—not like
their little brown houses but bright brick houses with
shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play
together in that field—the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns,
little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters.
Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her
father used often to hunt them in and out of the field with
his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep
James Joyce
1882-1941
2024-25
13/EVELINE
nix* and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they
seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was
not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That
was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters
were all grown up; her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was
dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England.
Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like
the others, to leave her home.
Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its
familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so
many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came
from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar
objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided.
And yet during all those years she had never found out the
name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on
the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured
* nix: an old slang word, originally used by thieves, to refer to the member of a gang who
kept watch
2024-25
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12/KALEIDOSCOPE
2 2
2 2 2
Eveline Eveline Eveline Eveline Eveline
James Joyce is a major literary figure of the first
quarter of the twentieth century. He is known
for his bold experiments in narrative techniques
in fiction, and Ulysses is his most famous work.
‘Eveline’ is one of the fifteen stories of Dublin
life that form Dubliners, first published in 1914.
It is a sympathetic portrayal of Eveline, who has
within her reach escape from the drudgery of
her life but cannot gather enough courage to
seize it.
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the
avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains
and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She
was tired.
Few people passed. The man out of the last house
passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clacking
along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on
the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there
used to be a field there in which they used to play every
evening with other people’s children. Then a man from
Belfast bought the field and built houses in it—not like
their little brown houses but bright brick houses with
shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play
together in that field—the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns,
little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters.
Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her
father used often to hunt them in and out of the field with
his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep
James Joyce
1882-1941
2024-25
13/EVELINE
nix* and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they
seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was
not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That
was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters
were all grown up; her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was
dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England.
Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like
the others, to leave her home.
Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its
familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so
many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came
from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar
objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided.
And yet during all those years she had never found out the
name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on
the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured
* nix: an old slang word, originally used by thieves, to refer to the member of a gang who
kept watch
2024-25
14/KALEIDOSCOPE
print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary
Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father.
Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father
used to pass it with a casual word: ‘He is in Melbourne
now.’
She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was
that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In
her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those
whom she had known all her life about her. Of course she
had to work hard, both in the house and at business. What
would they say of her in the Stores when they found out
that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool,
perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement.
Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on
her, especially whenever there were people listening.
‘Miss Hill, don’t you see these ladies are waiting?’
‘Look lively, Miss Hill, please.’
She wouId not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.
But in her new home, in a distant unknown country,
it would not be like that. Then she would be married—she,
Eveline. People would treat her with respect then. She
would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now,
though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself
in danger of her father’s violence. She knew it was that
that had given her the palpitations. When they were growing
up he had never gone for her, like he used to go for Harry
and Ernest, because she was a girl; but latterly he had
begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her
only for her dead mother’s sake. And now she had nobody
to protect her. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the
church decorating business, was nearly always down
somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble
for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her
unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages—seven
shillings—and Harry always sent up what he could but
the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said
she used to squander the money, that she had no head,
that he wasn’t going to give her his hard earned money to
throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually
fairly bad on Saturday night. In the end he would give her
2024-25
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12/KALEIDOSCOPE
2 2
2 2 2
Eveline Eveline Eveline Eveline Eveline
James Joyce is a major literary figure of the first
quarter of the twentieth century. He is known
for his bold experiments in narrative techniques
in fiction, and Ulysses is his most famous work.
‘Eveline’ is one of the fifteen stories of Dublin
life that form Dubliners, first published in 1914.
It is a sympathetic portrayal of Eveline, who has
within her reach escape from the drudgery of
her life but cannot gather enough courage to
seize it.
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the
avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains
and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She
was tired.
Few people passed. The man out of the last house
passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clacking
along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on
the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there
used to be a field there in which they used to play every
evening with other people’s children. Then a man from
Belfast bought the field and built houses in it—not like
their little brown houses but bright brick houses with
shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play
together in that field—the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns,
little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters.
Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her
father used often to hunt them in and out of the field with
his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep
James Joyce
1882-1941
2024-25
13/EVELINE
nix* and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they
seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was
not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That
was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters
were all grown up; her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was
dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England.
Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like
the others, to leave her home.
Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its
familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so
many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came
from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar
objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided.
And yet during all those years she had never found out the
name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on
the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured
* nix: an old slang word, originally used by thieves, to refer to the member of a gang who
kept watch
2024-25
14/KALEIDOSCOPE
print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary
Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father.
Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father
used to pass it with a casual word: ‘He is in Melbourne
now.’
She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was
that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In
her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those
whom she had known all her life about her. Of course she
had to work hard, both in the house and at business. What
would they say of her in the Stores when they found out
that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool,
perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement.
Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on
her, especially whenever there were people listening.
‘Miss Hill, don’t you see these ladies are waiting?’
‘Look lively, Miss Hill, please.’
She wouId not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.
But in her new home, in a distant unknown country,
it would not be like that. Then she would be married—she,
Eveline. People would treat her with respect then. She
would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now,
though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself
in danger of her father’s violence. She knew it was that
that had given her the palpitations. When they were growing
up he had never gone for her, like he used to go for Harry
and Ernest, because she was a girl; but latterly he had
begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her
only for her dead mother’s sake. And now she had nobody
to protect her. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the
church decorating business, was nearly always down
somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble
for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her
unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages—seven
shillings—and Harry always sent up what he could but
the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said
she used to squander the money, that she had no head,
that he wasn’t going to give her his hard earned money to
throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually
fairly bad on Saturday night. In the end he would give her
2024-25
15/EVELINE
the money and ask her had she any intention of buying
Sunday’s dinner. Then she had to rush out as quickly as
she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather
purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through
the crowds and returning home late under her load of
provisions. She had hard work to keep the house together
and to see that the two young children who had been left
to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals
regularly. It was hard work—a hard life—but now that she
was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable
life.
Stop and Think Stop and Think Stop and Think Stop and Think Stop and Think
1. Why did Eveline review all the familiar objects at
home?
2. Where was Eveline planning to go?
She was about to explore another life with Frank.
Frank was very kind, manly, open-hearted. She was to go
away with him by the night boat to be his wife and to live
with him in Buenos Aires where he had a home waiting for
her. How well she remembered the first time she had seen
him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where
she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was
standing at the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his
head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of bronze.
Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet
her outside the Stores every evening and see her home. He
took her to see The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as
she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theatre with him.
He was awfully fond of music and sang a little. People
knew that they were courting and, when he sang about
the lass that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly
confused. He used to call her Poppens out of fun. First of
all it had been an excitement for her to have a fellow and
then she had begun to like him. He had tales of distant
countries. He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month
on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told
her the names of the ships he had been on and the names
2024-25
Page 5


12/KALEIDOSCOPE
2 2
2 2 2
Eveline Eveline Eveline Eveline Eveline
James Joyce is a major literary figure of the first
quarter of the twentieth century. He is known
for his bold experiments in narrative techniques
in fiction, and Ulysses is his most famous work.
‘Eveline’ is one of the fifteen stories of Dublin
life that form Dubliners, first published in 1914.
It is a sympathetic portrayal of Eveline, who has
within her reach escape from the drudgery of
her life but cannot gather enough courage to
seize it.
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the
avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains
and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She
was tired.
Few people passed. The man out of the last house
passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clacking
along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on
the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there
used to be a field there in which they used to play every
evening with other people’s children. Then a man from
Belfast bought the field and built houses in it—not like
their little brown houses but bright brick houses with
shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play
together in that field—the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns,
little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters.
Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her
father used often to hunt them in and out of the field with
his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep
James Joyce
1882-1941
2024-25
13/EVELINE
nix* and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they
seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was
not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That
was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters
were all grown up; her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was
dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England.
Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like
the others, to leave her home.
Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its
familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so
many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came
from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar
objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided.
And yet during all those years she had never found out the
name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on
the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured
* nix: an old slang word, originally used by thieves, to refer to the member of a gang who
kept watch
2024-25
14/KALEIDOSCOPE
print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary
Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father.
Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father
used to pass it with a casual word: ‘He is in Melbourne
now.’
She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was
that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In
her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those
whom she had known all her life about her. Of course she
had to work hard, both in the house and at business. What
would they say of her in the Stores when they found out
that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool,
perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement.
Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on
her, especially whenever there were people listening.
‘Miss Hill, don’t you see these ladies are waiting?’
‘Look lively, Miss Hill, please.’
She wouId not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.
But in her new home, in a distant unknown country,
it would not be like that. Then she would be married—she,
Eveline. People would treat her with respect then. She
would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now,
though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself
in danger of her father’s violence. She knew it was that
that had given her the palpitations. When they were growing
up he had never gone for her, like he used to go for Harry
and Ernest, because she was a girl; but latterly he had
begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her
only for her dead mother’s sake. And now she had nobody
to protect her. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the
church decorating business, was nearly always down
somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble
for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her
unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages—seven
shillings—and Harry always sent up what he could but
the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said
she used to squander the money, that she had no head,
that he wasn’t going to give her his hard earned money to
throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually
fairly bad on Saturday night. In the end he would give her
2024-25
15/EVELINE
the money and ask her had she any intention of buying
Sunday’s dinner. Then she had to rush out as quickly as
she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather
purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through
the crowds and returning home late under her load of
provisions. She had hard work to keep the house together
and to see that the two young children who had been left
to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals
regularly. It was hard work—a hard life—but now that she
was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable
life.
Stop and Think Stop and Think Stop and Think Stop and Think Stop and Think
1. Why did Eveline review all the familiar objects at
home?
2. Where was Eveline planning to go?
She was about to explore another life with Frank.
Frank was very kind, manly, open-hearted. She was to go
away with him by the night boat to be his wife and to live
with him in Buenos Aires where he had a home waiting for
her. How well she remembered the first time she had seen
him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where
she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was
standing at the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his
head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of bronze.
Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet
her outside the Stores every evening and see her home. He
took her to see The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as
she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theatre with him.
He was awfully fond of music and sang a little. People
knew that they were courting and, when he sang about
the lass that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly
confused. He used to call her Poppens out of fun. First of
all it had been an excitement for her to have a fellow and
then she had begun to like him. He had tales of distant
countries. He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month
on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told
her the names of the ships he had been on and the names
2024-25
16/KALEIDOSCOPE
of the different services. He had sailed through the Straits
of Magellan and he told her stories of the terrible
Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Aires, he
said, and had come over to the old country just for a holiday.
Of course, her father had found out the affair and had
forbidden her to have anything to say to him.
‘I know these sailor chaps,’ he said.
One day he had quarrelled with Frank and after that
she had to meet her lover secretly.
The evening deepened in the avenue. The white of two
letters in her lap grew indistinct. One was to Harry; the
other was to her father. Ernest had been her favourite but
she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming old lately,
she noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be
very nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a
day, he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for
her at the fire. Another day, when their mother was alive,
they had all gone for a picnic to the Hill of Howth. She
remembered her father putting on her mother’s bonnet to
make the children laugh.
Her time was running out but she continued to sit by
the window, leaning her head against the window curtain,
inhaling the odour of dusty cretonne. Down far in the
avenue she could hear a street organ playing. She knew
the air. Strange that it should come that very night to
remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to
keep the home together as long as she could. She
remembered the last night of her mother’s illness; she was
again in the close dark room at the other side of the hall
and outside she heard a melancholy air of Italy. The organ
player had been ordered to go away and given six-pence.
She remembered her father strutting back into the sickroom
saying: ‘Damned Italians! coming over here!’
As she mused—the pitiful vision of her mother’s life
laid its spell on the very quick of her being that life of
commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness. She
trembled as she heard again her mother’s voice saying
constantly with foolish insistence: ‘Derevaun Seraun!
Derevaun Seraun!’*
* Derevaun.... Seraun, possibly corrupt Gaelic for ‘the end of pleasure is pain’
2024-25