Girls In Their Summer Dresses Summary example essay topic

In The Girls in Their Summer Dresses, it is necessary to explore the personal differences that cause problems in the relationship of the couple. The details of the story will lead to a conclusion that for Michael the relationship could just be a mere convenience or an affection solely generated by his physical wanting of Frances, so with the way she looks and appreciates the girls of New York. Frances calling the Stevensons shows her attitude which is passivity and lack of idealism to confront the relationship with his husband. She is going to call the Stevensons because, she and her husband have nothing more to discuss about. Michael's way of looking on women as mere bodies could suggest a kind of degradation-which is to define a woman only as an erotic or sexual figure. There is an irony in the relationship of the couple which is the bloodless horror from the truth expressed that somehow the things are not, and never have been, what they used to pretend about themselves.

It is clear in the details with Frances that she had an initial feeling of insignificance and she wanted to be loved and acknowledged by her husband. The sentence, "I'd do any damn thing for you" points to a certain desire to be recognized as a good wife because of some degree of sensitivity that a man is needed in the family as the head and without him everything is nothing. The "desire to please her husband" could also be attributed to liberation-such that Frances tries to uphold herself among other women and not just allowing Michael to dissolve her in the common wave of women. Her crying could also point to liberation by showing that she controls her own desires. The theme of the two stories revolves around the feminist issue of marriage.

A common notion between the two short stories is that love is a failure and a mere comic when there is the failure to recognize the beloved as a person and not a mere convenience. The stories also deal with the 18th and the 19th century American life-declining in their spiritual and emotional lives. As a convention, marriage for women has been a landmark of success. It is necessary for a woman to enter into marriage to be recognized by the society as successful. The requisites of marriage such as love and affection are often neglected in exchange for some financial value imposed by the husband. In The Story of an Hour it is exemplified in "a heart trouble" of Mrs. Mallard while in The Girls in Their Summer Dresses points out to Frances' longing to keep her husband in spite of her doubtful interest upon her.

The time frames presented by the two authors reveal the scene of women being considered as the weaker sex. The two stories, however, exemplify an inner longing of the feminine sex of independence and freedom from their husbands. It suggests an inherent "soul" of the women to overcome the male domination by means of showing independence and the idea that they can live by themselves without the presence of husbands. In the life of Louise, it is her statement if a freed soul and body that shows her exclamation of independence and also her acceptance without too much grief the death of her husband. For Frances it was her statement of freeing Michael of any time he wants. Women has always been the subject of degradation-mostly of physical nature during the 18th and 19th century.

Though some things have improved with the onset of women's rights in the mid-19th but some traditional things remained to persist. In the case of Louise, it can be suspected that the kind of repression is of physical and emotional nature. In the case of the New York girls, it is the definition given by Michael as mere bodies and her definition of how she likes and loves her wife which is more of the sexual beauty of Frances like her nice legs.