A symptom of the symbolic: psychoanalytic paralysis in James Joyce’s “Eveline”

This essay provides a psychoanalytic examination of James Joyce’s Eveline, arguing that the protagonist’s immobilization is a symptom of profound psychic conflict rather than a simple failure of will. It contends that Eveline’s inability to escape her oppressive home stems from unconscious attachments to the familial superego, a melancholic identification with her mother’s sacrificial fate, and the internalization of patriarchal prohibitions. The analysis draws on Freudian concepts of melancholia and the death drive, Lacanian theory regarding the foreclosure of the symbolic order and the intrusion of the Real, and Kristevan ideas of abjection. Further perspectives from Marcuse and Žižek illustrate how surplus-repression and ideological impasse contribute to her paralysis. The narrative structure is read as a representation of the conflict between Eros and Thanatos, demonstrating how Eveline becomes suspended between desire and duty. Her final refusal to act is revealed as a forced choice, where trauma precedes its cause and the symbolic frameworks for meaning and action collapse entirely, leaving only a hysterical symptom. By foregrounding the Žižekian notion that the symptom can precede its cause and by situating Eveline’s paralysis within the maternal abject, this essay extends existing psychoanalytic readings of the story, offering an interpretive framework that moves beyond trauma and inertia to reveal the deeper ideological and structural mechanisms that shape her immobilization.