The Dress
Siblings do not always get along well. It is normal to have disputes with your siblings. However, can the arguments go a bit too far? “The Dress” is a short story written by Julia Darling in 2006, which is about the relationship between two sisters, Rachel and Flora and the two sisters relationship with their mother. The story is centralized around a dress, which Flora took from Rachel without asking.
The mother has her 40th birthday at the time of the story. She is a divorced mother of two and works as a bereavement counselor. She is tired of her job and does not want to come home to more problems between people to solve. Not even problems between her own daughters. She has reached midlife crisis since she wants to quit her job and start as a jeweler instead. She wants to try something new and start doing something she really wants to. The mother is very affected by her job. When the two daughters argue she treats them as she treats her clients at her job. She does not act like a mother but more like a counselor when she tries to solve the argument and she fails miserably. The mother does not want to make scenes in public, as the daughters do at the restaurant; she wants people to think that they are a perfect little family of three. “She liked emotions to be explored in safe rooms, with a clock” (p. 3). The safe room with a clock is referencing to her job.
Flora and Rachel are in some ways very different girls and in some ways very similar. They have a rocky
The barrier between her and the neighbours after her husband’s death forced her to become reserved and quiet. Her and her son only went into town if they had to. They preferred to stay close to the garden where they felt safe. The death of the husband is the cause of the mothers’ complete change in character. The death let the audience connect with her on a deeper level to understand her pain and suffering.
She has a daughter. She calls herself worn-out, balding, arthritic mother. She has low self-esteem. “Maureen allowed this thought in self-mockery, to make herself feel young, but it did not have this effect”(1). Maureen is heartbroken.
Hope Edelman, a writer and mother, discusses her thoughts and experiences of the reality of marriage in, “The Myth of Co-Parenting: How It Was Supposed to Be. How It Was.” Edelman details how at the beginning of her marriage her husband was starting an internet business and had to take long hours causing Hope to cut hers in order to care for their child. Hope describes how she expected marriage to be a place where the spouses split homemaking and breadwinning equally. She quickly realized that that was not the case.
When her only son was going to school , she said; “ I never though a son of mine would choose useless books over the parents that have you life”(Macleod 18). It shows how the mother was putting so much pressure and guilt
In Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation by Edwidge Danticat tells the story of Saya, whose mother is being held in an immigration detention center. Saya’s mother is an undocumented immigrant originally from Haiti who was arrested by immigration police, leaving Saya alone with her father. Saya and her father visit the detention center every week, but do not know when her mother will return home. Saya finds comfort in listening to her mother’s voice and every week she receives a cassette tape which contain her mother telling bedtime stories. Saya is inspired by her mother’s storytelling and decides to write her own story.
The mother is clearly counting how much time she has away from her children. Her awareness of the time shows her unhappiness. What she wants is to be free from this restraint. Everything about Liza was an obligation she had to satisfy. If she did not tend to Liza’s needs, then both her ideal and reality would fall apart.
It helps her reaction that her life had been forever altered because her mother wasn’t coming back. In addition, another message Mrs. Partridge left said, “Everyone has their own agenda” (Creech 56). This message
The contrast between success and independence is what makes this short
story so memorable, it is a give and a take for the mother, the mother gives her the idea of her
success while saying she is a slut that she is bent on becoming makes the undertone of freedom.
The story overall though can be taken many ways can be seen as a mother reaching out to a teen
girl in hopes to make her a great
She once stated that at a funeral she would not let her mother console her, only her grandmother. Yet, the other children are more attached to their mother. The eldest is also closer to the grandfather as she is his caregiver and is to carry on certain traditions that he will pass down to her.
All of these patterns are a result of years of family addictions, abuse, divorce, and many other conflicts. Yet, they continue to work to change the cycle and have hope for a better life for their
Hood lays the foundation for the story and the generational gap from the opening line of the short story.
They had Quarreled all morning, squalled all summer: how tight the girl’s cut- off jeans were, the “Every Inch a Woman” T-shirt, her choice of music… her practiced inattention, her sullen look. (Hood 410) The grandmother struggled with the girl and her free spirit as if the grandmother had been apart of this story before expecting a different result; she hoped for “The surprise gift of a smile” (Hood 411).
In the beginning of the story the narrator who is the mom is waiting for her daughter named dee. She waits in the garden with Maggie. She knows that Maggie and dee do not get along. She imagines a big nice family reunion in her head.
This represents how the children rely on her through this rough time in society.
You can tell this mother has been through a lot of hardship throughout her life as her eyes are looking off in the distance and her palm is touching her blemished, wrinkled face. Her thin, chapped mouth appears to be frowning, like she is thinking of a plan, perhaps a way to feed her starving children. The end of her unwashed sleeves looks to be torn from the low paying labor she is forced to perform. Her bony
This disobedience only adds to the conflict which is not good for either of the two. The mother then finds out that she has breast cancer. Lola, the daughter, has no sense of empathy towards the mother. They still fight like crazy. And after more time has gone by, the daughter finally decides that it is time for her to run away and literally get out of the hands of her mother.
The reality of the situation was that she had no control over her father’s death. There was nothing or no way that she could have prevented the events that took place. Although she was extremely angry with the situation at hand she learned that she had other things to be grateful for. She wanted people to know that even though something or someone has passed away you can’t stay stuck in the state of depression forever. You have to step back and look at your life because the reality is, life still moves on.
