![]() There is no self-revelation to be had here. She remains without a label to describe herself. The narrator doesn’t quite identify with the older girl in the bathroom. This means there’s nothing in the external world to hasten an epiphany. Lesbians were a little further ahead than aces, since being gay is about how you relate to others, whereas being asexual (and trans) is about how you relate to yourself. The asexual movement was still three decades away at time of publication. Note that the story is set in 1946, published in 1968. ![]() Without the words to describe herself, she settles on ‘something mysterious the matter with me’ and ‘sickness’. Certainty rose inside me like a sickness. But I had not known it for sure, I had hoped to be mistaken. 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. I couldn’t close my eyes but I said over and over again in my mind, Please, me, please, and I locked my fingers behind my back in a sign more potent than crossing, the same secret sign Lonnie and I used not to be sent to the blackboard in Math. I have a red velvet dress, I did my hair in curlers, I used a deodorant and put on cologne. No word, no concept, no fully realised self-insight, just the underlying feeling that something is wrong with her: The narrator of “Red Dresses-1946” will be living her entire life with the hermeneutical injustice of no word to describe her identity. For an independent-minded young woman of 1946, a teaching or nursing wage was her best bet.įor queer readers, there’s more to this story. This was a huge step up from their grandmothers, for whom staying single was a poor economic decision, and no decision at all. Despite all this, a single woman could live frugally, even without marrying. The more intellectually stimulating jobs were kept for men. Although working women earned a stingy proportion of a male wage, even for the exact same work, though repetitive and routine tasks were considered women’s work. Young women now had models of how to live a non-starvation level life without relying on a white male income. ![]() WW2 opened new opportunities for young women. The post-war setting of this story is crucial to our understanding. It is significant that Alice Munro included the year of the setting in the very title. The narrator is highly identifiable as a young asexual character living in a milieu six decades before the word asexual existed in reference to orientation. “Red Dress-1946” describes perfectly a common queer experience. a consumer reviewerīut there’s another, even more fascinating layer to this story. But on their way through the gym to get their coats, a boy asks our narrator to dance, and she waves the girl off, feeling like she can’t say no to the boy, and equally relieved to be fitting in. The girl invites her to a diner for a cup of coffee and to keep talking. While they smoke in the janitor’s closet, our narrator begins to connect with this older girl, who says a lot of the things she’s thinking out loud, and echoes her dislike of much of the high school social mores. She meets an older girl who is an athlete and generally popular. When she arrives at the dance, after a few rounds of being passed over by the boys looking for partners, she hides in the bathroom. She doesn’t want to go, but can’t see how to opt out. She’s been feeling awkward since she started, is worried that her only friend isn’t really her friend, and wearing a dress her mother made that she doesn’t really like. My favourite story is about a girl in grade nine attending her first high school dance. Here’s a highly favourable consumer review of “Red Dress” which epitomises a straight take: But even without a queer subtext, “Red Dress-1946” is a strong story. ![]() I’m about to argue a queer subtext for Red Dress-1946. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |