Red Dress is a short story written by Alice Munro and published in 1946. The short story revolves around a 13-years old girl who is experiencing somewhat mixed feelings because of her teenage years and at the same time, she was discovering her sexuality. She goes to the Christmas dance in a red dress that her mother sewed. At the end of the story, the girl, who we never get to know her name, gets a different personality.
The Main Character
The main character in this short story is the thirteen years old highschool teenage girl who is also the narrator of the story. The reader would never get to know what her name is or how she looks other than she has self-confidence issues. She is experiencing issues with her self-confidence and self-esteem. For example, the girl was thinking about not being taken to dance with a boy
It did not work. What I had been afraid of was true. I was going to be left. There was something mysterious the matter with me, something that could not be put right like bad breath or overlooked like pimples, and everybody knew it, and I knew it; I had known it all along. (p.5)
The girl, later in the story, experiences a pivotal moment that changes the girl’s life when she meets Mary Fortune who had almost the same situation such as not being invited to dance by a boy or not belonging to the rich students at school. Mary Fortune explains her situation and her ideas. At the same time, she showed the girl that she had thought it out and she would do anything to achieve her goals. After talking to Mary Fortune and smoking a cigarette with her, the girl comes out more confident and doesn’t care about boys inviting her to the dance which was something the narrator explicitly said
I found that I was not so frightened, now that I had made up my mind to leave the dance behind. I was not waiting for anybody to choose me. I had my own plans. I did not have to smile or make signs of luck. It did not matter to me. I was on my way to have a hot chocolate, with my friend. (p. 7)
However, here it was when the magic happened and a boy named Raymond Bolting invited her for dancing and spent the whole night with her. The teenage girl changed from being a shy girl who lacked self-confidence and self-esteem and complained about not belonging to a wealthy family to becoming more confident about herself and her life. She is not afraid anymore and believes in herself and her opportunity in life. Yet, her look to her mother never changed despite the change in her attitude toward herself. She still felt obliged to show her mother that she was happy after the bale.
“I understood what a mysterious and oppressive obligation I had, to be happy, and how I had almost failed it and would be likely to fail it, every time, and she would not know.” (p.8)
The Main Theme
Several themes can be identified in the story but the most obvious one is about feminine sexuality out of a social aspect. That is, the story is about a teenage girl who is just exploring her sexuality in a world of expectation from her society and her own perceptions about how she should appear and what she needs to fit in and feel secure. The theme is most obvious in her small society, the school during the Christmas dance bale. Everything she did before and she was doing at the bale was revolving around getting picked by a boy to a dance. Further, the girl should appear in a specific way to be invited to the dance by a boy. It didn’t matter who the boy was. She just needed a random boy from the school to invite her to dance in order to feel as normal as other girls. Even when Mason Williams reluctantly approached her, she accepted and danced with him. The girls did not know that for sure but rather went in her imagination that he and his friends were expressing some kind of “dismay” feelings or the feeling of unacceptance and consternation. She imagined that although the guy approached her himself.
I saw a boy named Mason Williams coming reluctantly towards me. Barely touching my waist and my fingers, he began to dance with me. My legs were hollow, my arm trembled from the shoulder, I could not have spoken. This Mason Williams was one of the heroes of the school; he played basketball and hockey and walked the halls with an air of royal sullenness and barbaric contempt. To have to dance with a nonentity like me was as offensive to him as having to memorize Shakespeare. (p. 4)
The author wanted to draw attention to the issue of being a female in society. That is, not only the girl was the one who experienced such feelings, but even Mary Fortune and the other girls at school who just wanted a boy in their life or as Mary Fortune said in the story
Like this afternoon. This afternoon I was trying to get them to hang the bells and junk. They just get up on the ladders and fool around with boys. They don’t care if it ever gets decorated. It’s just an excuse. That’s the only aim they have in life, fooling around with boys. As far as I’m concerned, they’re idiots. (p. 5)
The author’s message about feminine sexuality and feminine role in society is in that way obvious. That is, the girl should be able to live up to boys’ expectations otherwise, she wonät be picked up by a guy. Girls should get picked up by boys because this is what society is expecting from them. Furthermore, they, the girls at school, should live up to boys’ expectations otherwise they will stay there with no boy in their life. Applying this on a higher level, such as the whole society, will lead us to the stereotypical perceptions that are in society.
Alice Munro and Feminism
Alice Munro presents a feminine ideology in her story. She reveals the status of women in a traditional and patriarchal society where there are basic assumptions and expectations about women (Prabhakar & Kodhmuri, 2011). In her story “Red Dress”, she explicitly mentions the boy-crazy girls. She even describes the girl’s thoughts about herself that she wasn’t as good as she should be to get picked by the boys at the Christmas dance bale.
It did not work. What I had been afraid of was true. I was going to be left. There was something mysterious the matter with me, something that could not be put right like bad breath or overlooked like pimples, and everybody knew it, and I knew it; I had known it all along (p. 5)
The girl was “afraid to be left” because, as per the story, girls should not be left but rather picked up by guys. In order to get picked up by other boys, she should live up to their expectations such as looking according to their assumptions about girls like not having “overlooked pimples” or overall, not being in a manner where something “could not be put right…”. In simpler words, the girl should be living according to the boys’ expectations and how they would like to see a girl because girls are dependent on being picked up by boys in this patriarchal society.
References
Dr.M.Prabhakar, & Satish, Kodhmuri. (2011). Alice Munro’s Stories and feminism. Cyber Literature: The International Online Journal – Literature, Humanities & Communication Technologies. Volume-4. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/215862631_Alice_Munro%27s_Stories_and_feminism [Accessed 14 November 2021]
Munro, A., 2013. Red Dress—1946 | Narrative Magazine. [online] Narrative Magazine. Available at: https://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/stories-week-2012-2013/story-week/red-dress-1946-alice-munro [Accessed 14 November 2021].