The Dress Maker, A literature class creative response.

Heres a review of "The Dress Maker" written by Beryl Bainbridge

Repressed lives in war time England, May 26, 2000
Reviewer: A reader
Beryl Bainbridge's "The Dressmaker" (a Booker Prize nominee) is a quietly haunting tale of repressed lives in war time England. A young girl living with her two aunts falls in love with an American soldier with a secret and less than honourable designs. The outcome of this one-sided love affair (conducted mainly in Rita's head) is a foregone conclusion and possibly the least important aspect of the novel. Bainbridge's interest lies in the exploration of small town provincial lives. Aunt Nellie's obsession with family heirlooms and being the faithful custodian of her late mother's furniture and other treasures is both touching and sad. Sad, because these objects have become a substitute for living. Aunt Margo - the younger widowed aunt - inhabits the novel's moral centre. Taut and crackling with repressed desire and emotion, she deeply resents the family pressure that forced her to give up a second chance at conjugal bliss. Her feelings towards Rita's doomed affair with Ira are certainly ambivalent. She acts out of genuine concern for Rita but there is a strong element of sexual envy as well. Bainbridge's writing is confident and authentic. Clearly, she understands the lives she's writing about. Readers may find the going slow. For that reason, it will not appeal to all, but for its genre (reminds me a little of Penelope Fitzgerald's "The Bookshop"), "The Dressmaker" is a triump and a worthy read.

My daughter wrote the following as a senior year student.

The Dressmaker - Lit Class Creative Response


Don't stand so close to the window
Somebody out there might see
Then the word on the wire
Would be just like Ash Wednesday bush fire
Kiss me quick, kiss me warm
Put your dress on and hurry back home
And don't stand so close to the window
Somebody out there might see
And you're not supposed to be here with me
The walls have ears and the darkness eyes don't you see?
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In Gothenburg's winter, the sun never truly rises. Light begins to trickle over the red houses just after the factory workers eat their lunch, and sets before the afternoon coffee break.
The half-light fails to slow the city. The Scandinavians live in darkness for six months, penance for the other half spent in endless summer sun. By now, they are used to it, no longer complaining, just accepting; waiting and waiting for spring to reach the hidden squares of the city.
In the harbour, the ships are being readied. Scrubbed and painted over a winter spent imprisoned by the frozen sea, they will be released with fanfare and pennants flying. Gothenburg is, after all, a harbour town, and depends on the water to survive. No longer just a harbour town, however. It is a European city, lovelier than Stockholm, and not as fast paced as Copenhagen.
Taking no notice of how such a city should be, it has developed from a working city into one that puts tables on the footpath and lingers over coffee. A place where you stumble upon boutiques and curio shops off the main squares. The capital of the South.
The overalled men with shovels and rakes turn the fountains on, drawing out the water from pipes chilled by the northern winter. The trees, stripped and stark, began to bud. The people turn their faces towards the sun, inhaling the warmth.

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Tilly had run as far from wheat-silo country as she could. She had retreated to the Great North, halfway across the world, where the people made sleek furniture and kept to themselves.
She stepped from the train, searching faces of nobody she knew. Lost in anonymity, Tilly moved through lovers, friends and mothers' towards the automatic doors. A flash of a red cape, silk and woven on the warp thread, whirled through the mass. A hat, Russian, on a grandmother as weathered as the fox-fur perched on her head.
Tilly followed the signs to the main exit, crossing the road just as the traffic lights turned green. Running, she swung aboard the nearest tram, escaping from one crush of people to another. Tram number eleven, to Heaven. Tilly swayed with the tram, ignoring the laughs of the tourists staggering as the tram turned. A novel experience for them, perhaps, but not for Tilly. She remembered the tram rides in Melbourne, as a girl alone in a new city; repeated now as a woman.
The driver announced the names of the stops - Jarntorget, Ekdal, Nya Varvet. She asked a woman clinging to the pole where the tram was headed.
"Saltholmen - the hamn, the harbour, where the boats live," the woman replied, trying out school-taught and nearly forgotten English.
To the water, Tilly thought. She felt enclosed, in a bubble of self, separated from conversations she would never understand. As the next stop - Hagen - was announced, she pushed her way to the door, battering people with her case. The first breath of air was unexpected, a mouthful Tilly hadn't realised she needed.
Alone at a stop in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by houses, a soccer field, unreadable tram timetables and shattered glass, Tilly set her case next to the fenced football field and climbed over.
She lay in the middle of the grass, watching the ground thaw and steam in the sun. Spreadeagled she looked up, into the sky, feeling new life form beneath her body.

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Sergeant Farrat was searching for Tilly. He had to, a report must be made. Official word came down from the headquarters - after all, the girl had burned a town. "An accident," the Sergeant said. "Faulty wiring, a pot left on the stove, the iron forgotten."
"Still," commanded the voice of bureaucracy, "A report must be made. Things must be sorted out, the town will need to be rebuilt, and the people reassured that the incident is on paper."
Farrat sighed. "The people are all gone," he said. "There's nothing here for them."
He found her eventually. Customs had been advised, and sent Tilly's ticket details to the Sergeant. Melbourne - Bangkok -Copenhagen. Twenty six hours on a plane to escape a town of less than 200 people.
"She couldn't go to Sydney, could she? Brisbane, Perth? No, the girl goes across the planet," he muttered to himself as he dialled.
He booked the flight. The ?'running-away account' so beloved of down-trodden housewives had become just that.

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Tilly found work in Jarntorget, the Gothenburg suburb like Carlton, or perhaps Collingwood. She trudged the city, garment bags containing her resume. The shops liked what they saw; she could see it in their fingers, as they checked the in-seams and stroked the lining.

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In Gothenburg, the Sergeant was lost. He found the Grand Avenue, lined with shops and people, trees and statues.
"Where is this? Can you help me?" he asked over and over again, showing people the address on the sheet of paper.
"Oh, no English!" they said. Or, "Here, you go like this," accompanied by waving hands and a multitude of lefts and rights. Eventually, he found a man who said "Oy! You an Aussie, mate?" The flat vowels immediately marked him as another from the southern hemisphere. Sergeant Farrat clung to the man.
"Do you know where this is?" he asked. "I've got to find it."
"Yeah, no worries," said the man, using the excess slang of a man separated from his native language. "Ya go down here, to the tram. Get a Number 11 to Saltholmen, get off at Hagen and -" he paused. "Look, I'll draw ya a map, she'll be apples, right?"
The Sergeant swayed on the tram, arm overhead, gripping the strap. He listened carefully for the stops, the driver's voice fuzzed and crackling.
"Nasta stopp, Godhemsgatan. Kungssten. Hagen."
The sergeant descended from the tram, maintaining a regal posture befitting his travel outfit, white linen pants and cuffed shirt. He had tied a black scarf around his neck, reasoning that this was Europe, and therefore, cold.


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