Born in Dublin on February 2, 1882, James Joyce was an Irish novelist and self-imposed exile from Ireland. He left Ireland in 1904 and lived alternately in Trieste, Italy; Zürich, Switzerland; and Paris, France. Despite his life as an émigré, nearly all of Joyce’s writings, except the unpublished Giacomo Joyce, are set in his home city of Dublin. Ireland and Irish concerns haunted his work, even when he expressed disdain for or criticized certain aspects of the country and its politics. Joyce admitted in a letter to his brother Stanislaus in 1906, “Sometimes thinking of Ireland it seems to me that I have been unnecessarily harsh. I have reproduced (in Dubliners at least) none of the attraction of the city” (Joyce, James. “Letter to S. Joyce, Sept. 25, 1906.” Letters of James Joyce Volume II. Ed. Richard Ellman. Faber & Faber, 1957).

Unlike Eveline and Frank in “Eveline,” Joyce and his lover Nora did escape Ireland, heading to Trieste in 1904. They had two children, Giorgio and Lucia, but Joyce did not marry Nora until 1930. Joyce often used Nora as inspiration for female characters, including Molly Bloom in Ulysses. Eveline, like Nora, is asked to leave Ireland with her lover; unlike Nora, at the moment of departure, Eveline cannot face the decision and chooses duty—or perhaps the safety of the familiar—rather than risk the uncertainty of a new path.