"In what light does Joyce present Eveline Hill in the story "Eveline?"
Joyce's techniques throughout the "Dubliners" collection remain very much the same. Keep this in mind. His subjects (decay, urban life, disease, repression, escape) are nearly always the same but reflected in each tale through a different circumstance and a different 'epiphany' or moment of revelation. Eveline is typical of many Joycean traits in these respects. As you go through the story, remember that she cannot be wholly removed conceptually from the other characters in Dubliners and their experiences.
Initially, notice the first line:
"She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue."
Notice that Joyce immediately sets Eveline up as a watcher, someone who observes life but does not necessarily take part in it. This will become crucial. Notice too that the evening is said to "invade" the avenue. The sense of oppression is one picked up on by Eveline - from both her family (specifically her father) and her lover.
Consider the second paragraph. It is not about Eveline. She has not yet been introduced properly. She is put in the context of a family environment which has now decayed - and no longer exists in the sense she imagines it. She is portrayed in terms of her past and of what is gone:
"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."
We are told that "Everything changes" but we also know from the conclusion that here it appears that nothing does. This is Eveline thinking, not Joyce describing (unless it is ironic, which is always possible). She is determined that everything must change and from this moment it begins to creep up on her: does everything have to change? Eveline is therefore shown as resolute and determined to leave "like the others". The sense is that she is the last remaining.
Notice later that the paranoia that takes the thought of leaving like the priest who has gone to Melbourne into concern about people who will laugh about her. This is small minded stuff, perhaps, but we already sense that she cannot separate herself from the life she knows. She is stuck inside these petty concerns and rivalries:
"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."
Just a few lines later Joyce is opening up as if through Eveline's mind the horrors of the past:
"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."
Note that she seeks respect in the realm of love. She wants to become what her mother was not. But also notice that she is set up beside her mother. Her mother has presumably died never having left the abusive father. Eveline, we know, is going to do exactly the same. She is just another version of her mother - a dependent even while she is a provider.
In the paragraph beginning: "She was about to explore another life with Frank" we are told of fabulous far away places. Note how unreal they are, and how suspect these tales are. Although the story is in the third person, the sense is that we are hearing Eveline's thoughts and she evidently distrusts Frank. He is a novelty, but her father crucially wants her to keep away from him (see the last lines of the paragraph). Note the sense of his influence invading even her dreams. She is not physically described, yet we see her in our minds contemplative but wracked with competing thoughts. It is a mental description above all.
This is a vital moment:
"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. "
Again, her entire life is filtered through these two competing male influences. She is starting to defend her father despite the total lack of logic implicit in that decision. She wants him to be better than he is. The sense is that of the battered wife - loving him still because he was once a better man and because he is not capable of being alone any more than she is. Note that the final line of the paragraph is a 'rose-tinted' vision of the past: a cutting or selection of one single good moment to justify her indecision.
In horror at herself and the memory of her mother's death (a competing impulse against the above) she says: "She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her". But of course this is just as rose-tinted as her vision of her father. This is the notion of a heroic sailor whisking her away to a distant land. It is idealistic and essentially foolish and weak-minded. She is portrayed as a dreamer again. Note the sense of "escape". Escape is a thought but it is desperate and ill-considered. It will fail.
The rest of the story is too powerful to summarise effectively, but the effect is certain. She is desperate and in love and so is Frank but he is in love with her while she is in love with a concept of escape that she cannot go through with. She locks herself up against the oppressive image of the boat (note the description, there is none of Frank). Ask yourself who the voice saying "Come!" is - is it Frank's or is it her subconscious?
"All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her.
She gripped with both hands at the iron railing."
Note the mythical undertones - of Charibdis the whirlpool drawing her under as Sirens guide her (this is Ulysses territory).
And that is it but for the final image of her. Notice that there was never a description of her until now. This is like the first line: a vision of a lonely woman caught up in herself and in her past:
"She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition."
She is a blank. She has been brainwashed by her own conflicting desires and the ultimate wish to stay despite the urge to leave. She is "a helpless animal". That is the only description of her. She is like a rabbit in the headlights of life and wholly unable to move (i.e. escape). She is doomed.