Abstract: In the scholarship on James Joyce's “Eveline,” there have been a host of over-interpretations of the narrative gap concerning Frank, Eveline's boyfriend, which are far from Joyce's aesthetics. Text World Theory, however, may help us examine more workable and meaningful gaps, such as the absence of the parameters of security and ethics when Eveline thoughtfully weighs up the pros and cons of her elopement. In the light of Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy, these two gaps help us with new understandings of nausea, a seemingly insignificant detail, and fatigue, an implicit but recurrent motif throughout the text, both of which contribute Hamletian connotations to Eveline's tragedy. While on the surface a warning to Irish female emigrants at the end of the nineteenth century, the story in its depth renders the complex interconnections between fatigue, effort, delay, nausea, and existence.

Key words: “Eveline”, narrative gaps, Text World Theory, Levinas, nausea