Character Analysis: A Red Dress

There are many moments in a person’s lives that affect them, and change their mind set, sometimes for the better or worse. In the main character’s case in the short story “A Red Dress”, she went from not caring about self image and what she wore, to caring very much about it after realizing what the world thinks. But after more experiences, she realized that someone can still be loved no matter what the look like. As shown with her, overtime, one’s realization about how other people think of you can change who you are, until you realize it really doesn't matter.

When she was a little girl,she didn’t care what others thought, and she didn’t know how society was. “When I was younger, a flower organdie dress with a high Victorian neckline edged

This change occurred when she went to the dance. “I took out the curlers in my hair..I applied face powder, zipped up my dress.” She had gotten all dressed up, because in her mind, dressing up would give her a better chance of being liked and maybe be asked to dance. However, when she gets to the dance she doesn’t get asked. Girls who were fat, had pimples, and poor girls all got danced with. This makes her very upset and she doesn’t understand why they got chosen to dance but not her. As she waits in the bathroom, one event leads to another and she smokes a cigarette with Mary Thomas, a popular upperclassmen. But as she is about to leave the dance with Mary to go get hot chocolate, something she thought wouldn’t happen, does. “It was Raymond Bolting from our class, whom I had never talked to in my life. He thought I meant yes. He put his hand on my waist and almost without meaning to, I began to dance.” Just as she thought she wouldn’t be danced with, she got to. This is when she realized you don’t have to look all good, and be all dressed up for someone to want to be with you, talk to you, or dance with you. At this time, her understanding of how people feel about you and think about you went back more similar to her first