The Dress Case

A dress was all it took for a family to be torn apart, in Julia Darling's short story. If you have ever been in a fight with your sibling you might understand Flora and Rachel situation, I can certainly, as the older sister I am, set my self into Rachel's situation and maybe my little brother would understand the motives that drove Flora into doing as she did better than I do? The story I think is about selfishness and desires, which in the end drives these three persons apart.

The title I self doesn't give much away. When I heard it, I personally thought of a bright red dress. But when you have read the story, this simple title seems very fitting, because such a small thing can cause so much havoc

In the Dress we meet three persons: Rachel, Flora who are sisters and their mother. Rachel is the older of the two, we are never told in words but the way Rachel and Flora acts, I'll presume Rachel is the oldest, she is the most mature of the two, at least in some ways. Their mother, who you don't know the name of, has just turned forty. She is divorced, which you know, when Rachel leaves and she says: "I'm going to Dad's." (s. 11, 135). Both sisters are very selfish, though Rachel is aware that she shouldn't destroy the evening of their mother's birthday because of it. Flora thoughts on the evening is opposite of her sister's: "And that night it was their mother's birthday and Rachel wouldn't be able to shout at her" Flora thinks of herself first before her mother. We are not told where the story takes place, nor are we given any clues. Theoretically the story could take place almost anywhere in the world.

The text jumps in time several places, both back and forward. The first time when we go from following Flora, to jump to the restaurant (s. 9, 48-50), when we jump from the restaurant back home(s. 11, 122), and a flashback when Flora tells what happened to Rachel's dress (s. 11, 159). The flashback works very well, because you had a feeling something bad happened to the dress, but you don't know exactly what, and then in the end the suspension is finally released.

The narrator is an omniscient narrator which also comments on the characters, there have already been given examples of situations in the text where the narrator "jumps" in time. The narrator also jumps from person to person, you get to follow all the three characters in the story, and therefore see all characters' point of view. You can see it is not a non-omniscient narrator because you hear the characters thoughts and know their feelings, an example: "I am leaving, she thought. I never want to see my sister again." (s. 10, 105-106). Sometimes the narrator stays at one person for while, like at the restaurant where it's from the mother's point of view, almost the whole time: "The mothers head ached. She wanted the meal to be over.