Analyse af Julia Darlings novelle 'The Dress'

”The Dress” is a contemporary short story written by Julia Darling in 2006, about the relationship of two semi grownup sisters Rachel and Flora, and how their mother handles, or rather how she doesn’t handle, the shortcomings of her two daughters’ sisterhood. In the following analysis and interpretation of “The Dress”, I will attempt to straighten out the complex relationship between the sisters, partially by characterizing the mother and partially by explaining the symbolism of the dress, which the sisters are fighting about.

The story begins in medias res. It is the mother’s 40eth birthday, and Rachel can’t find the dress, witch she has planned to wear on the occultation. We follow the furious Rachel around the family’s house, looking for her dress, while raging at her sister, who is nowhere to be found. As soon as she calms down and gives up, we start following the sister Flora instead. Floras part of the story explains her point of view and strives to justify Flora stealing the dress. Floras part of the story is followed by the mothers birthday dinner at the restaurant. The whole dinner is dominated by an upcoming storm, and when Rachel finitely reveals the source of her frustrations with her sister, Flora doesn’t deny or confess, she simply laughs and scans the room for a way to avoid the confrontation. When cornered by the mother, she explodes in denial. She doesn’t concede to her sisters accusations before they are all back in the house, and Rachel is about to leave. This defines the forth part of the story; the confession. The mother throws Flora out of the house, and the relationship between the sisters is never established. The ending is sealed by the words of the narrator: “And the dress lay in the tired earth, smelling of dead birds in a porch in an empty house, and was forgotten.”