The Dressmaker Study Guide

Rosalie Ham was born in the rural province of Jerilderie, Australia. Her father was a farmer, and Ham enjoyed an active childhood and spent a lot of time outside helping on the farm. After finishing school, Ham traveled abroad before returning to Australia to study at Deakin University in Victoria. Ham studied drama and literature but fell in love with fiction during her studies. Ham then took a job in a care home, where she worked until 2005. Ham wrote her first novel, The Dressmaker, in 1996 while she was participating in a writer’s course. She wrote part of the novel as an assignment for her course but she was inspired by the story and wanted to continue. The Dressmaker was published in 2000 and was turned into a film, starring Kate Winslet, in 2015. Ham has since published three more novels, Summer at Mount Hope, There Should Be More Dancing, and The Year of the Farmer. Like The Dressmaker, these novels deal with social relationships and rural life in Australia. Ham lives in Melbourne with her husband, where she teaches literature at the University of Melbourne.

The Dressmaker is set during the 1950s in Australia, and it deals with many of the technological and social changes which occurred during this time period. After World War II, which ended in 1945, Australia experienced a long period of economic growth and rapid technological development. These technological changes are referenced in the novel through developments in transport (such as diesel trains replacing steam trains) and farming techniques (such as modern grain silos). Australia also implemented an immigration program during the 1950s and encouraged people from Europe to move there due to fears that Australia could be easily invaded by surrounding countries if its population was too low. The Dressmaker portrays a small  Australian town in which people are reluctant to adapt to these changes and to accept people coming into their communities from outside. Medical advances in the 1950s also meant that prescription drugs were more widely available to ordinary people, and this change is also addressed throughout The Dressmaker. In particular, the novel is concerned with the potential for people to abuse these powerful drugs or to use them to manipulate others, as in the case of Evan Pettyman medically sedating his wife in order to sexually assault her.

The Dressmaker depicts a small, conservative community which condemns outsiders and those who stray from its strict moral codes. In this way, the book is reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” which famously depicts a group of townspeople who stone an outcast to death. Shirley Jackson’s novels, such as We Have Always Lived in the Castle, also deal with themes of conformity and alienation, and they use gothic tropes and black humor in a similar way to Ham. The depiction of Tilly and Molly’s mother-daughter relationship, as outcasts in a small town, is reminiscent of Joanne Harris’s novel Chocolat or Alice Hoffman’s magical-realist novel Practical Magic. Ham’s depiction of the gossiping townspeople and the spread of rumors and tales is reminiscent of Stephen King’s description of a small American town in his novel Salem’s Lot, while Ham’s dark humor is similar to Scottish writer Muriel Spark’s grotesque and comedic characters in novels like The Girls of Slender Means or The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Ham’s work has also been compared to the novels of Jane Austen because of her astute and comedic portrayals of social dynamics. The chapters in The Dressmaker in which the town frantically prepares for the ball are similar to Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story, “The Gentleman from Krakow,” in which a small town’s population goes into a frenzy of competition and corruption as they prepare for a ball. Additionally, the townspeople in the novel put on a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and certain characters (like Sergeant Farrat, who plays Banquo) have experiences that parallel their roles in Shakespeare’s play.