The Theory of ‘The Second Sex’ in James Joyce’s Eveline (1904)

Abstract

Throughout the course of history, men have been known for their superiority over women who were often deprived of their rights, and considered as inferior and passive. Women in Europe and all over the world made an incredible effort to shift their fate and gain more respect. Fundamentally, with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, in the 1920’s .In Ireland, women lived in similar conditions, within patriarchal society of men superiority as heads of their families. As a result, writers could not hold this outrageous situation and started to voice women’s concerns, using their pens. The present dissertation is an analysis of James Joyce’s short story- Eveline. The events of the story are noteworthy, since they decisively represent women in the Irish patriarchal society- a society dominated by male. The ultimate aim of this study, then, is to try to investigate Irish women suppression in the 1920’s. The study focuses on the role of Feminism and the theory of The Second Sex by De Beauvoir as a driving force for equal rights, in the larger culture of societies