Analyzing the title of “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses”
“A little bit of summer is what the whole year is all about.” (Mayer, 2013) Irwin Shaw was born as Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff in the South Bronx in New York City. His family were Jewish immigrants from Russia; and at the age of 21 he began his career as screenwriter. His short story “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses” was written in 1939. The title of this work is misleading, yet effective because, even though, the reader was deceived, ultimately, she keeps reading it anyway. In the following essay I will focus on the effectiveness of the title given by the author; I will explore what my expectations were, why I would not change the title it and why the title works.
When I first read the title, I was expecting a story set in the countryside, with some high schoolers enjoying the Summer break before going back to classes in the Autumn. Since for the Americans, Summer is the most expected season of the year. So, these girls with flowery pattern dresses would be having picnics next to a river or a lake and swimming during the hottest hours of the day. As a woman living in the Caribbean, that has sunny days almost year-round, and that has never experienced the cold Autumn, the freezing Winter and the chilling Summer, there for, I do not know what is like to be expectant for the Summer to start.
I definitely would not change the title, although, I could think of some more on point alternative titles, but they would give right away the plot, or something else that might make the reader say, “Next! I don’t want to read about a couple that is having a dispute. There are many stories about this already.” Shaw managed to write an engaging story about a common problem of the era by disguising it on a trip to New York. Since we live in 2021, in order to understand the couple’s dynamic, we must examine the social time back in 1939, which helps us as a history lesson review as well.
The title works as it is because, this makes us thinks about Summer, dresses and some girls having fun. No one would think at first that the story’s main themes are male lust, gender differences and female insecurity. As soon as you start reading the story, you get hooked, because Shaw uses a very descriptive language, you can picture everything in your mind, and you start walking down the streets of New York alongside this couple, enjoying the gossip about their relationship. Since is a third-person limited the point of view, we only get to know about their feelings and thoughts when they start speaking about them, making us read until the end to know the resolution.
To wrap it up, my expectations were thrown away through the window right after beginning to read the story. I would still keep the title as it is. The title works just as the bait that attracts the fish. Therefore, this title is efficient in making the readers want to read about a story of some girls having fun in the Summer, because we all can relate to it, since, we were once young, and we did enjoy our Summer time with our family and/or friends, and we all have a Summer that will forever be stuck in our minds.
Hasta la próxima,
By Warrior Princess
http://wp-shetalks.blogspot.com/
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