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Miss Marsalles
The narrator’s mother is a middle-class woman who took piano lessons from Miss Marsalles in her youth and now has her own daughter—the narrator—who takes lessons from Miss Marsalles, too. The narrator’s mother is highly conscious of social etiquette and concerned about what is socially proper, respectable, and polite. Since moving to the suburbs, she worries she’ll fall behind current fashions. She doesn’t enjoy attending Miss Marsalles’s annual parties because they’re awkward, tedious, and uncomfortably embarrassing. She also pities Miss Marsalles and feels superior to the elderly spinster instead of genuinely caring for her. When the narrator’s mother is invited to this year’s June recital, she dreads the event and tries to lie and make up excuses against attending. But, out of politeness, she agrees to go. At the party, she puts on a false appearance, pretending to enjoy herself. She suffers discomfort at Mrs. Clegg’s inconsiderate gossip and the poor state of the food. She doesn’t find pleasure in listening to the children’s performances and grows outraged when a new group of children arrives from Greenhill School. These children, who are more of Miss Marsalles’s students, have Down syndrome. The narrator’s mother believes that their presence goes against propriety because their differences make them unfit for polite society. Her prejudice about who does and doesn’t belong in society prevents her from fully appreciating Dolores Boyle’s beautiful playing. She rejects both the music and the happiness it could bring her. The narrator’s mother’s preoccupation with politeness thus discourages her from being genuine, hinders her from experiencing joy and valuable human connection, and causes her to treat other people with little empathy or kindness.
The Narrator’s Mother Quotes in Dance of the Happy Shades
The Dance of the Happy Shades quotes below are all either spoken by The Narrator’s Mother or refer to The Narrator’s Mother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Dance of the Happy Shades
Quotes
[…] she turns her face from the telephone with that look of irritation—as if she had seen something messy which she was unable to clean up—which is her private expression of pity.
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Here they found themselves year after year […] drawn together by a rather implausible allegiance—not so much to Miss Marsalles as to the ceremonies of their childhood, to a more exacting pattern of life which had been breaking apart even then but which survived, and unaccountably still survived, in Miss Marsalles’ living room. […] They exchanged smiles which showed no lack of good manners, and yet expressed a familiar, humorous amazement at the sameness of things […]; so they acknowledged the incredible, the wholly unrealistic persistence of Miss Marsalles and her sister and their life.
But after the house in Rosedale was gone, after it had given way to the bungalow on Bank Street, these conversations about Miss Marsalles’ means did not take place; this aspect of Miss Marsalles’ life had passed into that region of painful subjects which it is crude and unmannerly to discuss.
My mother seems unable, although she makes a great effort, to take her eyes off the dining-room table and the complacent journeys of the marauding flies. Finally she achieves a dreamy, distant look, with her eyes focused somewhere above the punch-bowl, which makes it possible for her to keep her head turned in that direction and yet does not in any positive sense give her away.
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“Sometimes that kind is quite musical,” says Mrs. Clegg.
“Who are they?” my mother whispers, surely not aware of how upset she sounds.
“They’re from that class she has out at the Greenhill School. They’re nice little things and some of them are quite musical but of course they’re not all there.”
My mother and the others are almost audible saying to themselves: No, I know it is not right to be repelled by such children and I am not repelled, but nobody told me I was going to come here to listen to a procession of little—little idiots for that’s what they are—WHAT KIND OF A PARTY IS THIS?
The mothers sit, caught with a look of protest on their faces, a more profound anxiety than before, as if reminded of something that they had forgotten they had forgotten; the white-haired girl sits ungracefully at the piano with her head hanging down, and the music is carried through the open door and the windows to the cindery summer street.
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The Narrator’s Mother Quotes in Dance of the Happy Shades
The Dance of the Happy Shades quotes below are all either spoken by The Narrator’s Mother or refer to The Narrator’s Mother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Dance of the Happy Shades
Quotes
[…] she turns her face from the telephone with that look of irritation—as if she had seen something messy which she was unable to clean up—which is her private expression of pity.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Here they found themselves year after year […] drawn together by a rather implausible allegiance—not so much to Miss Marsalles as to the ceremonies of their childhood, to a more exacting pattern of life which had been breaking apart even then but which survived, and unaccountably still survived, in Miss Marsalles’ living room. […] They exchanged smiles which showed no lack of good manners, and yet expressed a familiar, humorous amazement at the sameness of things […]; so they acknowledged the incredible, the wholly unrealistic persistence of Miss Marsalles and her sister and their life.
But after the house in Rosedale was gone, after it had given way to the bungalow on Bank Street, these conversations about Miss Marsalles’ means did not take place; this aspect of Miss Marsalles’ life had passed into that region of painful subjects which it is crude and unmannerly to discuss.
My mother seems unable, although she makes a great effort, to take her eyes off the dining-room table and the complacent journeys of the marauding flies. Finally she achieves a dreamy, distant look, with her eyes focused somewhere above the punch-bowl, which makes it possible for her to keep her head turned in that direction and yet does not in any positive sense give her away.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“Sometimes that kind is quite musical,” says Mrs. Clegg.
“Who are they?” my mother whispers, surely not aware of how upset she sounds.
“They’re from that class she has out at the Greenhill School. They’re nice little things and some of them are quite musical but of course they’re not all there.”
My mother and the others are almost audible saying to themselves: No, I know it is not right to be repelled by such children and I am not repelled, but nobody told me I was going to come here to listen to a procession of little—little idiots for that’s what they are—WHAT KIND OF A PARTY IS THIS?
The mothers sit, caught with a look of protest on their faces, a more profound anxiety than before, as if reminded of something that they had forgotten they had forgotten; the white-haired girl sits ungracefully at the piano with her head hanging down, and the music is carried through the open door and the windows to the cindery summer street.
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