“In a distant unknown country:” A New Historicist Look at James Joyce’s “Eveline,” Argentina, and the Zwi Migdal in the Early 1900s

Abstract

This article analyzes James Joyce’s story “Eveline” (1904) looking at the moral panic about “white slavery” in Europe and the new continent, especially focusing on Argentina, the foremost recipient of trafficked women between 1880 and 1930 (and, of course, Joyce’s destination of choice for Eveline). It was precisely at the turn of the twentieth century that, along with the popularity of transatlantic migration, sex trafficking went fully global and news about international “dangers” for single white women reached the general public, provoking all kinds of repressive reactions through what became known as the “social purity” movement.