What is the theme in "Eveline"?

I take the theme
of '' to be one of Joyce's key preoccupations, the idea of paralysis, our inability to break out
of situations that have become home for us, even when those situations are unpleasant or worse.
Most of the story is taken up with Eveline's reflections and her attempts to balance her
decision: 'She tried to weigh each side of the question.' But it is fairly clear from the sheer
volume of people and things that she reflects on that she is desperately attached to them,
however perverse it may seem. Her father is a deeply unattractive figure who controls her life
and yet she finds a few pathetic good memories of him, telling her a story and making toast for
her when she was ill and putting on her mother's bonnet for a laugh. The fact that she notes his
ageing is also a clue that she will not follow through on her emigration from Ireland.

So I take the story to stand for any such situation in which the familiar, however
oppressive or enslaving it might be, is always preferable to the adventurous or romantic or
exotic. It is a strange but true fact of life that women often remain with abusive partners, for
example, or that bullied people court the approval and company of those who bully them. Eveline
can see the emptiness of her life and knows she must escape - the word is emphasized twice with
exclamation marks - but her paralysis at the end of the story confirms what we the readers have
picked up already from the way her mind is working: she will never have the courage to do
it.

Some interpretations go much further and see Eveline as a symbol of
Ireland under British rule and basically more comfortable that way than trying to become an
independent nation, but then Joyce has been interpreted in so many different ways that you'll
have to make up your own mind about that! Good luck in your reading.