"And tell me something: if you hadn’t married him, would you still be going back?” “I don’t know,” Eilis said. “But you are getting the train in the morning?” her mother said. (p. 258)
As the reader, what do you believe Eilis would have decided to do if she had left America and arrived in Ireland without actually having married Tony?
What does it say about her mother that she went to her bedroom and refused to spend any time with Eilis the night before she left, or the next morning?
Eilis left without really knowing whether her mother knew about Tony before she arrived back in Ireland. How do you think Rose handled the information in Eilis’s letters, and why?
1) I believe Eilis would not have returned to Brooklyn had she not married Tony. I feel the only thing that pushed Eilis to make up her mind to leave was her meeting with Miss Kelly. If Eilis had not married Tony, Miss Kelly would only be able to expose her for having a boyfriend in America, which would not hurt her reputation in small-town Enniscorthy as much as leaving a husband behind.
ReplyDelete2) The way Eilis' mother reacted to the news that she was going back to Brooklyn helped me to understand why Eilis is so passive. Her father died when Eilis was young and her mother ignores situations, thus this is all Eilis knows to do. Throughout the novel, we see a pattern of the Lacey family suppressing most thoughts and feelings. The most important example would be the fact that Eilis never outright states her opinion about leaving home for America. Instead, she awaits the reactions of Rose and her mother which ultimately push her to go.
3) I don't believe Rose shared Eilis' news of a boyfriend since Rose specifically instructed Eilis to send any personal information to her work address so as to avoid their mother knowing certain events. What would be the point of this had Rose told their mother anyway? I did, however, wonder where Rose left the confidential letters Eilis had sent. Perhaps she destroyed them when she had finished reading them.