But I think those girls are still pretty young, they seem to be pretty naïve about how it works. But the narrator is aware about how she looks and she think as a grown up in the end of the short story, so would guess thirteen.
The interesting thing with this girl is that opposed to most other girls; she doesn’t want to fall in love. She compares the marriage with being tied with chains and says that all of the other girls get tame so the boys will like them and maybe marry them. This girl wants to swim against the stream.
You know, how does this girl know she is ugly? People must have told her or let her understand this somehow. She has probably been hurt many times and seen how people like Nenny with pretty eyes gets boys easily. So, what is she supposed to do? Everyone would do what he or she can do to take his or her pain away. This is how the narrator does it, she doesn’t want to let anyone hurt her again. “Her power is her own. She will not give it away”. To me the power is her love and trust. And her self- respect. If she gives it to someone, she risks that they will give back destroyed. And then she has to suffer even more. She will go her own way, don’t care about what others mean. That way she will not ever feel inferior anyone ever again.
Personally, I’m an expert on this. I’ve been doing this for years, always stops whatever-it-is before it gets too serious. Except once, but we had a big fight about this and I had to break up with him because I just couldn’t trust his words even I really wanted too. Or even more important, I couldn’t feel what I felt or loose my independency. Sometimes I’m really jealous at my friends who give away their heart and are totally in love. Some of them get the heart back and it’s no longer complete. So they cry and listens to sad love-songs and after a little while they fall in love again with the same blue eyes and gives away their heart again and they still believes. But it's always some who fall in love faster than others. With both benefits and disadvantages.
A Trip in a Summer Dress is about a young lady who also is running away. She has a baby, Matthew, but she gave him away to her mother. She did it so her son would have a better life with a mum and dad and not being a result as a one night stand his teenager mum had. But it’s hard, she loves him deeply and I think the love a mother has for her child is one of the strongest feeling ever. She tries to get him back and asks why she can’t, but her mother says, “Count the I’s an
d you will know” (p.124). What her mother meant was that she was too immature to be a mum. I liked the answer, but I don’t like the influence she has on her daughter. It seems like it’s more her decision than her daughter’s.
On the way to her new husband, the narrator thinks about her son and finally decides that her son deserves to know the truth. She calls her mum from the bus station but her mother wouldn’t listen. She only talks about the summer dress the narrator is wearing, that it’s too cold to be wearing a summer dress this late on the year. I feel that her mum is saying “It’s too late to tell anyone about Matthew being your son, it too late to take him away from us”. Therefore the title. The wind blows from North (her mother?) and are sharp as scissors and she’s freezing her arms where the sleeves ought to be.
First time I read the short story I thought she was not going back on the bus to Eureka Springs. In my head the last sentence meant that she had to do something about mum always being right and go home and take Matthew back. But, when I read it the second time, there is nothing that tells me what she is going to do. Of course I hope she get’s her Matthew and treat him like what he is; her son. But life isn’t always fair, we all know that.
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