Body as a Signifier: Eveline`s Nausea = Body as a Signifier: Eveline`s Nausea

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Despite the positive message that Eveline at least tries to escape from Dublin, Eveline reads as one of the gloomiest stories among the Dubliners. The tedious visioning and revisioning process of the heroine takes up most of the narrative. Harrowed by continual victimization by her father, Eveline becomes a girl of emotional passivity and spiritual inertia. And an elopement with Frank to Buenos Aires suggests to her a will-to escape and a new mode of life, totally different from that of the stagnation in Dublin. She cannot, however, simply make up her mind. Defining life in Dublin as not wholly undesirable, Eveline would not leave her home and bullying father. Infatuation with familar objects at home and promises with her dying mother also prevents her from taking that step toward freedom. A girl of post-adolescence, however, Eveline`s body shows a healthy sexulal response to Frank`s temptation. She feels satisfied at the awakening of her heterosexualilty while feeling confused by her bodily arousal. Not knowing exactly the hidden motifs behind Frank`s suggestion, she agrees to go whith him. As the departure date comes around, she feels extremely disturbed and at the quay her psychic frenzy reaches the highest point. Caught in the state of emotional entrophy when her closed system was about to explode from within, she looks like an helpless animal caged behind bars. When her mind cannot work properly in a state of extreme tension, she feels nausea. Nausea in this case becomes a highly expressive sinifier: her body is telling her something that her mind cannot comprehend. Her body has become awakened as a feminine subject and now it speaks a language of resistance. We therefore recognize that Eveline who seems to continue her vegetative existence has not totally been caught up in the state of living death: at least her body is alive, awakened and is starting to speak its own language. That is the hope of this gloomy narrative.