Is Eveline's Dream Deferred?

In James Joyce’s short story “Eveline” the audience witnesses her paralysis early on in the story. Eveline takes care of her family, but wants to leave her abusive father to travel to a foreign place with her mate. Her mother’s wishes though, go against what she wants. Even Eveline knows that if she leaves she will just be apart of the cycle of “coming and going” around her neighborhood. Her epiphany comes closer to the end when she decides not to jump aboard to the boat of possibilities and new beginnings. A simple sound triggered her mother’s wishes and she “…clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish!”(41). It was a cry of hopelessness, of sorrow that Eveline cried. She realizes although she doesn’t want to be a part of the change, her not changing may be detrimental to herself. And the dream she had of leaving was deferred.

Which reminds me of the poem, “Harlem”, by Langston Hughes. Here Hughes talks about what a dream becomes if nothing is done about it. Deferred is usually used to describe nothing good, but what happens to a dream put off until later. During “Eveline”, she reaches all the way up to the breaking point, and then instead of exploding, (which would have been jumping on the boat); she looses courage and stays ashore. Although Hughes character and the character in Joyce’s story are very different, they share the experience of a dream deferred.