Previous
Growing Up
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in ‘And Women Must Weep’, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
In “‘And Women Must Weep,’” pressures to look and act in socially approved ways are pervasive. At the ball, Dolly must look pretty, smile, present herself as cheerful and gracious at all times, dance without mistake, eat daintily, and catch the interest of young men. These social expectations are taught to Dolly and externally enforced by older women. Auntie Cha and Miss Biddons frequently remind Dolly of the importance of meeting these expectations, and they chastise her when she doesn’t display the ideal behavior. Dolly also internalizes these social expectations and puts pressure on herself to live up to them in order to be socially successful. When her appearance is marred by her torn dress, she missteps during a waltz, and she is largely ignored by the men whom she was supposed to attract, Dolly believes she has failed and will be scorned by people around her for the rest of her life. Her inability to measure up to social pressures crushes Dolly with embarrassment and shame.
Yet, after the ball, Dolly realizes that she never felt any real desire within herself to accomplish what society expected her to accomplish. She didn’t enjoy putting herself on display at the ball, and she only pretended to want any of “the gentlemen” she saw there. The social pressures she faces harm Dolly because they punish her for not achieving perfection and because they obscure her individual desires. The critical moment of Dolly’s growing up is the point when she discerns that her inner desires are separate from society’s expectations for her. The story suggests that reaching maturity requires the difficult yet crucial understanding that one’s internal desires may be at odds with the desires society pressures one to adopt.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Compare and contrast themes from other texts to this theme…
Social Pressures vs. Internal Desires ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Social Pressures vs. Internal Desires appears in each chapter of ‘And Women Must Weep’. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
How often theme appears:
chapter length:
Get the entire ‘And Women Must Weep’ LitChart as a printable PDF.
Social Pressures vs. Internal Desires Quotes in ‘And Women Must Weep’
Below you will find the important quotes in ‘And Women Must Weep’ related to the theme of Social Pressures vs. Internal Desires.
‘And Women Must Weep’
Quotes
Alas! in getting out a little accident happened. She caught the bottom of one of her flounces—the skirt was made of nothing else—on the iron step, and ripped off the selvedge. Auntie Cha said: “My dear, how clumsy!” She could have cried with vexation.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
At first she made a show of studying her programme; but you couldn’t go on staring at a programme for ever: and presently her shame at its emptiness grew till she could bear it no longer, and, seizing a moment when people were dancing, she slipped it down the front of her dress.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
And to this she clung, sitting the while wishing with her whole heart that her dress was black and her hair grey, like Auntie Cha’s […] Yes, to-night she wished she was old… an old, old woman.
She wanted only to be quite alone…where nobody could see her…where nobody would ever see her again […] she tore off the wreath and ripped open her dress, now crushed to nothing from so much sitting, and threw them from her anywhere…
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“Well, I don’t know what it was, but the plain truth is, she didn’t take!”
Oh, the shame of it!...the sting and the shame. Her first ball, and not to have “taken,” to have failed to “attract the gentlemen”—this was a slur that would rest on her all her life.
And yet…and yet…in spite of everything, a small voice that wouldn’t be silenced kept on saying: “It wasn’t my fault…it wasn’t my fault!”
She had tried her hardest, done everything she was told to do: had dressed up to please and look pretty, sat in the front row offering her programme, smiled when she didn’t feel a bit like smiling…and almost more than anything she thought she hated the memory of that smile (it was like trying to make people buy something they didn’t think worth while.)
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
For really, truly, right deep down in her, she hadn’t wanted “the gentlemen” any more than they’d wanted her: she had only had to pretend to.
