Gender Readings. Top Ten. Ренц Т.Г - 84 стр.

10           JAMES JOYCE
             EVELINE

      She sat at the window watching the evening enter the avenue.
Her head was leaned against the window curtains, and in her nostrils
was the odour of dusty cotton cloth. She was tired.
      Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his
way home; she heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pave-
ment and afterwards crunching on the path before the new red houses.
Once there used to be a field there in which they used to play every
evening with other people’s children. Then a man from Belfast bought
the field and built houses on it — not like their little brown houses,
but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The children of the avenue
used to play together in that field — the Devines, the Waters, the
Dunns, little Keogh the cri pple, she and her brothers and sisters.
Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used
often to hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick. 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.
      Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar
objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wonder-
ing where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never
see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of
being divided.
      She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that
wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home
anyway she had shelter and food, she had those whom she had
known all her life about her. Of course she had to work hard, both in
the house and at business. What would they say of her at 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 spoken harshly to her,
especially whenever there were people listening.

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