Family Decisions in "Eveline"As we grow up, never a day goes by when we don't have to make a decision. As we make these decisions, we are influenced by our family and friends. In "Eveline" by James Joyce, family structure is important to the decision-making skills that Eveline possesses. Eveline's choice whether to go with her lover Frank to Buenos Ayres is not hers, but rather determined by her family. Because her family is dysfunctional, Eveline is also dysfunctional and is unable to leave her unhealthy home environment for a new life with Frank. One member of Eveline's family who influences her choices is her mother. In many families mothers and daughters have a lifelong bond where a mother will give advice to her son, but in Eveline's case it is her mother who gives her orders. While Eveline's mother is on her deathbed, she asks Eveline to make a promise to "keep the house together as long as [she can]" (6). Eveline promises to do this for her mother, not knowing that this promise could keep her trapped in a dead-end life forever. To keep this promise, Eveline works day after day. He works in shops to earn money for the family and then returns home to take care of his younger siblings. Eveline's life is "hard work, hard living" (5), but she manages to do it every day even though she is not happy. With all her responsibilities towards her family, Eveline finds it difficult to think about leaving her home to go with Frank, a sailor who has asked her to marry him. The promise her mother asks her to make influences her decision because she cannot break the promise she made to her mother to keep the promise she made to Frank. The deathbed promise may not have been intended to keep Eveline from being happy... at the center of the card... her mother's unhappy fate. Unfortunately, when she arrives at the dock, she fears that if she leaves she will do the wrong thing - and the thought that her life might still take a similar turn to her mother's might cross her mind (her mother told her that "the la the end of pleasure is pain" [566]). Thus, caught between the fear and the guilt that her parents have bestowed on her, Eveline is unable to make a decision at all. She remains frozen in emotional paralysis Frank calls her, she "[turns] her white face towards him, passive, like a helpless animal" (567) Eveline's family has destroyed her ability to make a decision for herself; dusty where he does not know the name of the priest in the photograph and the children he is caring for are not his. Work cited Joyce, James Dubliners, 1998.