Analyse af Julia Darlings roman 'The dress'

“The dress” is a quite new novel which is written in 2006 by Julia Darling. The novel is about a girl, called Flora, who just stole a dress of her sister. She finds the dress elegant, and once she wears it when she goes out with her Italian friend, Alberto. The sister, called Rachel, who is so careful about keeping her things locked in her room, finds out that Flora has stolen her favorite dress. Rachel tries keeping her anger in control because of their mother’s fortieth birthday. Anyway Rachel explodes at the very expensive and classy restaurant, and it ends with the fact that they arrive at a decision to go home. When they come home, Rachel goes upstairs and calls her father. She gets the permission to move into his house, and she starts packing her suitcase. Before she leaves the house, the two sisters start arguing again, and Flora tells Rachel and the mother the truth. She admits that she stole Rachel’s dress, and she also admits that she was seeing Alberto. By a stroke of bad luck she spilt some cocktail on the green dress, and it was very difficult to wash the splash off. She came back home and buried the dress in the garden. When Rachel hears it, she wishes her mother happy birthday for a last time and storms out of the house. The mother gets mad and tells Flora to leave the house.The mother is a bereavement counselor who advises people who have difficult problems. The mother seems to be a busy woman who hardly spends her spare time with her daughters. The text doesn’t say anything about her look. The only fact we know is that she is a busy and wealthy woman who likes to spend some time with her daughters on her birthday - that’s why she takes them to an expensive restaurant. But she didn’t expect that the occasion will cause a scandal. All she wished was a pleasant dinner with her daughters; the girls she loved. She tries to be evocative even though there feeds a silence between the sisters. The mother starts talking and tries to make the girls in happy mood, but it wasn’t possible making them more talkative. We clearly see in the text that she feels sad when she sits at the restaurant while the waiter serves food, and people around her were having fun. In the background she hears that some people celebrate one’s birthday. She gets sad and a little jealous when the others sing “Happy birthday” to Larry while the sisters sit and grumble to her birthday. Finally the truth, which Flora tells her, gets her really furious which makes her yelled at Flora, and she tells Flora to go digging the dress up. The relationship between the mother and the daughters seems to be a little absent because she doesn’t live with the daughters’ father, and she might not have brought them well up. I don’t either think that the daughters know their mother well enough. When the mother says that she considers leaving her job, the girls didn’t even know that the mother wasn’t really happy about doing the same job. This tells us that the mother hasn’t a close relationship to her girls. Neither the relationship between the sisters is good. The text says that they usually argue a lot because of unimportant things. It’s clear that Rachel hates Flora, and she isn’t even willing to share things with Flora. Rachel is this perfect girl who is tall, brave and clever while Flora isn’t. Flora isn’t just a stealer. She is also a very irritating sister who keeps ignoring Rachel when Rachel asks for her dress. Flora feels that the green dress possesses magic which makes her steal the dress. But it ends with the fact that their relationship gets worse, and Rachel decides to leave the house. It could be that there have been smaller problems between the sisters before, but none of them knew that the dress would cause such a huge strife and hatred between the girls. The story lasts for a whole day where Rachel starts yelling at Flora in the start of the story, and the mother finishes yelling at Flora in the end of the story. The text is divided in sections - every time something new happens. And the text is actually written chronologically, but sometimes you can see some flashbacks. When Flora wears the dress and hangs out with Alberto at the café, for instance. By the way the atmosphere and the surroundings aren’t quite pleasant. A mother, who likes to be loved. Two sisters, who argue the whole time. And the ending where all three of them split to pieces. Julia Darling has chosen to use a third person narrator who is a little omniscient which makes the text much more manageable to understand the whole situation. But Darling doesn’t really touch on the way the three women feel. She sees everything from the outside, but sometimes she describes the interior feelings. Among other things the novel is written in the past tense.The language is daily spoken which makes us able to understand the text. The language is also a little rough when Flora uses the word “Fucking (dress)”. The text is quite suitable for youngsters and parents, for instance. I would think that the theme of the story is “less care” or “shortage of care”. If the mother had spent more time with her daughters, she wouldn’t experience such a loss. Firstly she doesn’t live together with the girls’ father. Secondly she has an over-good job which makes her spend less time with her daughters. Because of the less care, the girls have been grown apart. She was so excited about having a pleasant birthday party with the girls, but unfortunately it ended badly. The fact, that Flora stole, made her furious, and maybe she may have been realizing that she hasn’t been a good mother to her daughters. You can for sure see such a conflict between two sisters today, or a mother who has neglect her entire life and kids by working and travelling.