Georgina Pr.

For this piece I was primarily infuenced by a character from James Joyce's collection of short stories Dubliners. Joyce depicts his characters struggling to live through the urban decay and the corruption in Dublin. The details highlighting the grim realities of the city focus on the hardships and thus create a tragic tone and a subtle critique upon Joyce's city.The characters are trapped in their restrictive mundane routines which cages them into cycles of frustration, ultimate stillness and paralysis.  "Eveline", is a story from the collection and the heroine whose name is signified by the title has the chance to escape from the restraint of the oppresive atmosphere in Dublin but chooses her miserable familiar life, which is stigmatized by her father's abuse over her running away with her lover in Argentina. Eveline is terrified of the unknown, constrained by her gender role and her inability to move beyond the memories of her dead mother; she finds herself at an inner struggle and is finally paralyzed by her own fears. It is also important to note the symbolism of the dusk in Dubliners. Dublin is perpetually dark creating a sombre tone, characters appear to always live the most important part of their lives in dusk, an intermediate time between day and night. This evokes a state of half-life and half-death which is linked both to Eveline's conflict and since dark is associated with stillness, numbness and ultimately death,  her final paralysis. "Eveline" is one of my favorite stories and in my opinion one of the saddest ones as the character is doomed by herself to paralysis. In the first part of the diptych I wanted to illustrate her struggle to grasp upon a hope, a lover, a better future. In the second part of the diptych I illustrated Eveline in the last part of the story, where she is about to leave with her love but prays to God to guide her towards her duty. God and religion appears to be what metaphorically has restrained her from her happiness as she finally chose to stay loyal to her abusive father. However, I depicted her head with a flock of butterflies that signify her desire for escape and her need for love. Lastly I painted a black background to highlight the motif of darkness and half-numbness in Dublin associated with dusk.