Prejudice, Otherness, and Ostracization Theme Analysis

“Dance of the Happy Shades” is ultimately about people who are othered by their society. Miss Marsalles and her sister are two such people. Both women are unmarried and childless, contrary to societal norms for women. Moreover, their old age sets them apart from the younger, modern women; the elderly sisters seem to belong to a distant, antiquated past. Combined, these factors lead to the Marsalles sisters’ isolation from society. Their shared impoverishment and the declining health of Miss Marsalles’s older sister must also intensify Miss Marsalles’s loneliness. Other people pity the Marsalles sisters but do little to help or connect with them beyond a superficial level. In other words, they don’t sincerely care about the sisters.

Instead, they try to distance themselves, made uncomfortable by the sisters’ differences. Other women condemn the sisters for being ugly and grotesque, infantilize them by calling them babies, and they treat them as if they exist outside the world of “normal” people. Similarly, the children from Greenhill School are also othered by society. Because they have Down syndrome, they’re ostracized and seen as “abnormal.” The mothers at Miss Marsalles’s party are repulsed by the children’s differences and offended by their presence. They believe it’s polite to ignore the existence of these children rather than acknowledge them, and they think musicality is “useless” and “out-of-place” for children with disabilities. In fact, the children are effectively dehumanized by everyone except Miss Marsalles, who is herself othered by society. Indeed, Miss Marsalles is the only person in the story who treats the children with Down syndrome with any sort of kindness, as she seems to hold no prejudices against them. Furthermore, she treats everyone at her party equally and expresses the same amount of joy about all of her pupils’ performances. She’s neither shocked nor upset that Dolores Boyle, a girl with Down syndrome, plays the piano beautifully. Instead, she’s as happy with Dolores as with any of her students. By highlighting this dynamic, “Dance of the Happy Shades” illustrates the hurtful isolation and ostracization that some people in society undergo and, most importantly, refutes the notion that anyone should be shunned or kept invisible, instead encouraging a spirit of empathy and acceptance.