Explore the ways in which Richardson makes you feel sorry for Dolly in 'And Women Must Weep.'
Richardson in “And Women Must Weep” makes you feel sorry for Dolly through use of point of iew, symbolism, long paragraphs and the story title. The reader can very much identify with Dolly's suffering as she goes to her first dance, full of hope, only to have a bad time and to go home to cry.
Richardson writes the story, in third person, but from Dolly's point of view. We know what Dolly's thoughts are throughout the story. We see her initial high hopes and nervousness when she is at home waiting to go to the dance. We feel her sense of lowered confidence when she goes to the dance and notices how everyone else seems to have a prettier dress than her. We feel her shame when the partners she has to dance with are far from ideal. We know how hard is it for her to maintain her dignity in response to the indifference everyone else at the dance has for her.
This decline in Dolly's confidence is symbolised by her dress. The dress represents her hopes and ultimate disappointment of her experience of going to the dance. At the beginning of the story, she is proud of the dress and tries very hard to keep it looking nice. But her efforts are ruined by the dress accidentally being torn. The efforts of her aunt and Miss Biddons to repair the dress are unsuccessful and so when she arrives at the dance, the pride she had in her dress quickly disappeared. Everyone else, she sees, has a better looking dress and she feels that everyone must notice the damage done to her dress. The reader being close to Dolly’s thoughts is well aware of the lowering of her hopes.
The reader is made to feel the lowering of her hopes through Richardson's use of long paragraphs that draw out the agony of Dolly's frustrations and her painful attempts at maintaining her dignity.We become aware of every possible thought that could cross her mind like her having to put on a fake smile, the false hopes she had when a gentleman walked in her direction, her resentment at the men who can chose any girl they want but don't ever think to chose her, and of her pleas that one of these men would chose her. We see that when she goes home from the dance, that she cannot help but lock herself in her room and cry.
That she wouldn't cry would be impossible given that the title of the story includes the word 'must weep'. The title of the story foreshadows for the reader what has to happen at the end. The alert reader will know right away that Dolly's little bit of optimism at the beginning is doomed to go away. Nothing is more pathetic to watch someone undertake a process where they going are to fail, and know they are failing while they are doing it.
Richardson in “And Women Must Weep” makes us feel sorry for Dolly by presenting all aspects of her ordeal to us through many plot and literary devices. Not once is the reader tempted to laugh at Dolly. Instead the reader feels her pain like it is their own.
