"Eveline": Situational Irony

        In the rather sad, short story, Eveline by James Joyce, Evvy remembers her childhood and yearns to reclaim the sanguine state she once had.  The author uses situational irony to add a twist to the fate of Evvy.  To start, Eveline looks back at a happier time, then snap back to reality when realizing that "she and her brothers and sisters are all grown up; her mother dead" (Joyce).  This depressing realization urges the woman to reclaim happiness in her life.  Marrying Frank, a worldly and exotic man, is Evy's plan to bring back the joy that has been sucked from beneath her.  Still, some kind of guilt weighs upon Eveline in deciding whether or not she should run away to marry Frank.  I, personally, predicted that Eveline would, after years spent with a strict and angry father, have no trouble in leaving her family behind to create a new life of her own.  I was really taken by surprise when Evvy could not physically make herself climb aboard the boat with Frank.  Moreover, Evvy may appear to not want to leave her home, but earlier, she mentions that home is no longer the warm, comforting place she grew up in.  And this, in fact, in confusing.