Eveline is conflicted. She has the opportunity to start a new life with Frank in Buenos Ares. This promises to be a much better life than her mother experienced. Eveline will be escaping a bitter life with her abusive father and the responsibilities of keeping her family together. This promise she'd made to her mother. So, it is not easy for her to consider leaving.
Eveline is torn between staying and leaving. For the majority of the story, she is still, sitting by the window, contemplating her decision. She sees the hope in moving away but thinks of her promise to her mother and even rationalizes the idea of staying when she recalls times when her father was "not so bad."
Eveline is only nineteen but she is tired. She is burdened with caring for her family. The potential escape to Buenos Ares seems like an exotic paradise when compared with the suffering, impoverished life she's experienced in Ireland.
Her name literally means "little Eve" and this of course has Biblical allusions. If she leaves, unwed, with Frank, she would be considered a fallen woman, especially by the Catholic community in Ireland. But if she stays, she will continue to have a difficult life and will therefore be miserable and "fallen" in her own personal life. So, the decision is not so clear cut. Eveline is conflicted and feels stuck, knowing that consequences will result from either choice.
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