'The dress' af Julia Darling, novelleanalyse

“It is as if Julia, in the driver’s seat, takes off at speed, taking the reader on an at times hairy journey full of hairpin bends and sudden steep hills, laughing, sometimes wildly, then slowing down suddenly to a leisurely country pace.” Writes the Scottish author, playwriter and novelist Jackie Kay after Julia Darlings passing in 2005. Julia were as Jackie Kay an author and novelist, and because of her carrier she was always traveling, and by this she often saw the extraordinary in the ordinary, which gave inspiration to her writings. She looked at the ‘fragile relationships’ and ‘the raw mess of love’, these elements are represented in her short story “The dress” which was released in 2006. The short story revolves around two sister Rachel and Flora, who gets in a fight about a dress on their mothers 40´th birthday. In the text a semantic field is represented which revolves around anger, disagreement and jealousy, which describes the two sister’s relationship, and by switching the point of view throughout the text contrast is created.

In the text the point of view chronologically switches in order of Rachel, Flora and the mother. This shows multiple sides of the same story, and shows the fight and disagreement about the dress, between Flora and Rachel, as well as mother’s point of view seen from the outside. This is shown in the following quotes. “Flora was wearing it, sitting outside a café, blonde hair falling across her eyes as she laughed, flicking ash onto the ground” (p1, line 11-12) “The glass had slipped out of Flora´s hand. The drink was bright red with glassy slivers of ice and fruit. The front of the dress was stained horribly.” (p1, line 159-160) “Rachel walked back into the blue kitchen [….] she started at the place she had left the dress ironed and ready to wear for the night” (p1, line 12-14) “So when Flora found the dress hanging in the kitchen, available, her eyes had widened with pleasure”(p. 2, line 38-39) “ The mother saw how Rachel hardly looked at her sister” (p 2, line 54) “the mother sat between then, nibbling olives talking incessantly, aware of the hollow silence between them.” (p2, line 57-58). By the use of different point of views, contrasts accrue when the same situation is descripted by multiple charectors. Rachels description of how Flora was wearing the dress on her date