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Within Joyce's "Eveline", the female protagonist is shown reflecting on her memories and past experiences in a place she has learned to call home. She sits against a window trying to determine her future fate. She has two choices, one to stay home and go on with her daily life or the second, to move away to Buenos Aires with her lover Frank, and live a new life. As she considers her situation, she undergoes a paralysis that ultimately leads her to an epiphany.

From the very beginning of the story, she recognizes that a part of her is unhappy with her life. The life she lives is a hard one; she is constantly working at either keeping the house together, working at the store, or taking care of two children by taking them to school and providing them with meals. Moreover, she is quite lonely. Her mother and brother have passed away, her other brother is always traveling, and all of her childhood friends have either died or moved away. Furthermore, while she lives at home with her father, she fears him as "he had begun to threaten her" while "she had nobody to protect her". Yet, in further pondering her situation, she seems reluctant to leave. As she is writing out her goodbye letters to her father and brother she realizes that they would miss her as much as she would miss them, "She liked Harry...her father...he would miss her. Sometimes he could be very nice." She even goes on to remember how she had promised her mother "to keep the home together as long as she could."

The same night, as she is about to leave to Buenos Aires with Frank, she experiences a sudden paralysis. She is literally unable to move as she clings onto an iron railing petrified by her surroundings, the ship and the sea:

"All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing."

Only then does she come to terms with her epiphany that she can not leave her home in attempts to build a new one, "No! No! No! It was impossible."

She had previously convinced herself that she could escape her life by moving away with Frank. In doing so she could build a new one full of love and happiness. But at the end, she comes to terms with her true feelings towards her home, family, and Frank. She realizes she really doesn't love him as she had originally assumed, "her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition" and that giving up her current situation wouldn't necessarily guarantee her a better one.

In the novel Disgrace, Lucy experiences a very similar situation. After her attack, for a long time she experiences a paralysis, not physically but mentally. Although she tries to move on with her life as though nothing has happened she is unable to do so as demonstrated by the drastic change in her personality. Furthermore, she constantly stays locked up in her room. When David asks her to sell her land and leave her home in the hopes of providing her a better life, she comes to an epiphany that no matter what she can not leave her home. That leaving home, won't guarantee her a better life. Even when she accepts Petrus' proposal for marriage in exchange for her land, she accepts with the condition that she still keeps her house, her home.