”The Dress” is a short story written by Julia Darling and is from the collection “So, what kept you?” in 2006. The main part in the story is about two sister’s relationship and their fight about a dress. The reason for this arguing is that one of girls has stolen and ruined a dress from her sister on their mothers fortieth birthday. That ends up having consequences for the family.
Rachel and Flora are siblings in this short story, and their parents are divorced: “She called her father and asked if she could stay with him”. We do not get information about their father or his place, so we can conclude the girls live with their mother. She works as a bereavement counselor, but has been considering changing her job and sell jewelry instead. This is a typical family with two sisters that can’t agree, and on their mothers fortieth birthday they start fighting at a restaurant. It seems that the family can’t communicate with each other and just care for themselves. The mother tries to talk with her daughters but without any luck, and she mentions that the communication between her daughters is “barbered and dangerous”.
The relationships in the family are not good, especially not between the two sisters. It shows in the text where Rachel asks about her dress and Flora answered that Rachel would hate her if she told. Rachel answers “I hate you anyway”. It seems to be that Rachel is the oldest sister because of her behavior, and Flora as the youngest one because she looks up to her sister by using her dress: “The dress was meant for her, not Rachel. It made her feel taller, braver, cleverer, and Rachel was all those things already.”
Det er gratis at oprette en konto