How does James Joyce depict Dubliners in "Eveline"?

Before
looking at howdepictsin his short story "," it helps to look at how he envisions the
inhabitants of Dublin in his short story collection (Dubliners) as a whole.
For the most part, Joyce sees Dubliners as "paralyzed" individuals. This does not mean
that they are actually physically unable to move; rather, Dubliners are paralyzed because they
are unable to grow, progress, or move forward in a meaningful way (at least, according to
Joyce's interpretation). Thus, many of Joyce's main characters are stuck in a largely
unfulfilled existence. Most characters realize this fact through climactic epiphanies, one of
Joyce's most famous literary tools.

Now, let's look at "Eveline"
within this context. The eponymous character of the short story is a young woman who leads an
abysmal existence. Her mother is dead, and so she is forced to work a dead-end job to make ends
meet and to help care for her younger siblings. To make matters worse, Eveline's father is an
alcoholic who drinks up much of her earnings and verbally abuses her. Eveline spends much of the
story looking out a window onto the street (an image which exemplifies exactly how trapped she
is) and ruminating on her sad existence. However, when she is given the opportunity to run away
with a man and leave behind the confines of her life, Eveline chooses to stay home.

It's clear, then, that Joyce's portrait of Dubliners in "Eveline" is
consistent with his depiction of the city dwellers in the rest of his short stories. Like her
urban compatriots, Eveline is stuck in a dead-end world that has little hope of progressing.
Thus, in "Eveline" and elsewhere in Dubliners, the inhabitants of
Dublin are metaphorically paralyzed. By depicting Dubliners in such a way, Joyce highlights the
oppressive experience of living in Dublin at the beginning of the Twentieth
Century.