‘’The Dress’’ Julia Darling

’’The Dress’’ is a short story about a single mother who lives with her two teenage daughters, Rachel and Flora. In the story we hear about their daily life with fights between Rachel and Flora, how the mother feel and how she reacts to these fights.

It seems like the family lives in a rich and wealthy place, because of the expensive restaurant and the Café Malata where Flora is drinking some cocktails with Alberto. The mother in the story is divorced from her daughters’ father, and it didn’t seem that she since divorce has had strength to find a new man. She is forty and works as a bereavement counselor, where she is helping people with their troubles. Her relationship to her teenage daughters is not very well. The daughters have often fights and as their mother she always has to interfere to get her daughters apart. At her work she always meet people with sadness, who she has to help, and then when she come home she want to have a break and relax, but it is not the case, because of her daughters fight: ‘’I’m forty, the mother said. She felt sorry for herself. All day she had sat with tearful needy people. It was her birthday, and she wanted to relax. She wanted to feel loved’’, (page. 10 line. 18-19). At the restaurant she is talking about to leave her job and instead make something with jewellery, because she does not want to live the rest of her life with sadness. Maybe she feels alone, she has only her two teenage daughters, and they are only thinking about themselves. When the mother does not has a boyfriend – a husband - to give her some love, and then she needs some other. But Rachel and Flora do not help that much. An example is when they are sitting at the restaurant, behind them there is a colorful party, a birthday party for a girl called Larry. When they suddenly begin to sing: ‘’Happy birthday, dear Larry’’, the mother feel her overlooked, because it is exactly what she is dreaming about, a family which is giving her love, not at least at her birthday. It is maybe why she wants to change her job, so she can find love in some other things, the love she not gets from her family.

In Rachel and Flora’s relationship you will find a lot of envy, especially from Flora’s side. Flora feels that Rachel has all the things that Flora does not have, and it is also why Flora steals the dress from her sister: ‘’…the dress was meant for her, not for Rachel. It made her feel taller, braver, cleverer, and Rachel was all those things already’’, (page. 9 line. 1-2). But if she was wearing the dress she would has all these things: ‘’at first she had simply thought that she would try it on for a moment and then replace it, but once it clung to her young body she found she was unable to take it off. She walked around the empty house, rejoicing in the way the dress made her feel slim and long legged’’, (page. 9 line. 7-9).
Their mother describes their communication as barbed and dangerous. The only time they are talking with each other, is when they fight. The fight in the story is just one of the many fights they have, maybe it was one of the worst. In this fight about ‘’The Dress’’ Flora thought that it was the best time to do, because she knew that Rachel could not yelled at her at the restaurant. Their whole relationship is based on the dress.

The story is structured in a special way. It starts in medias res, where the reader throws in to the story from the beginning. It seems like the story is a part of a big book with many stories about the family’s life. In the start we hear how Rachel feels about her dress’ disappearing and then straight after we hear how Flora feels in her sister’s dress, so the reader reads the story some different perspectives. At the same the narrator changing in the time from present to past tense, which gives the reader a feeling about what has happened in the past. There are also some flashbacks, an example could be when Flora admits that she stole the dress, here she tell where it is and why she buried the dress in the garden: ‘’ the glass had slipped out of Flora’s hand. The drink was bright red, with glassy silvers of ice and fruit. The front of the dress was stained horribly. She and Alberto had drabbed and rubbed the stain with napkins, but it just made things worse’’, (page. 11 line. 159-161).

A symbol of the mother’s loneliness could be the girl – Larry they meet at the restaurant. The dress could be a symbol of the relationship between Rachel and Flora, because when Flora took the dress and wear it Rachel leaves the house and then after the dress and their relationship destroyed. The dress could also be a symbol of success and attention, because when Flora has the dress everything is good, she has everything she needs: ‘’as Flora walked through the hot city she felt airy ad delighted’’, (page. 8 line. 33-34). We also hear that Flora is laughing with their mother, when they at the sitting room are drinking wine, she also steals the spotlight to the mother.

The big theme in the story is ‘’how to live a life as a single mother’’, which challenges it gives and how you feel and react in different ways. How the daily life is with two teenage daughters, in these way who fights about ‘’The Dress’’. Another theme could be ‘’jalousie between teenage sisters’’, how to react in good and bad, and in these way, how Rachel and Flora react about the fabulous dress.