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Chapter 5
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Dressmaker, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Transformation, Illusion, and Truth
Vengeance and Suffering
Secrets, Hypocrisy, and Conformity
Memories, Progress, and the Past
Healing, Medicine, and Power
Summary
Analysis
In Pratt’s, Reginald Blood serves Faith O’Brien at the meat counter. Faith flirts with the butcher and she can barely breathe when he teases her. William Beaumont enters and asks Gertrude where Alvin is. Gertrude introduces herself brightly to William, but he wanders off before she can finish. Gertrude watches William approach Alvin and ask to buy some gardening equipment, but Alvin explains that Elsbeth Beaumont has many outstanding debts. William seems stunned and he leaves the shop, ignoring Gertrude’s attempts to flirt with him. As Gertrude watches William leave, Muriel informs her that there is a dance on Saturday night.
Faith and Reginald are having an affair—something most of the townspeople know about. This suggests that the Dungatar residents are hypocritical because they will harshly judge outsiders, like Molly, for similar behavior (Molly had an illegitimate child—Tilly—when she was not married) but will make allowances for people they consider insiders, like Faith and Reginald. Meanwhile, Elsbeth tries to disguise her poverty by running up debts so that she can maintain an appearance of wealth. Her public appearance is not based in reality, and Alvin makes that known to William here, which suggests that the truth usually comes out in the end.
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Themes
Tilly tries to visit the school library, but it is closed. She sits by the river instead, and she remembers her own school days in Dungatar. She recalls being on “ink well duty” and that Stewart Pettyman used to bang the drum when they marched into class. One day, when Tilly was pouring ink into pots for the students, Stewart shoved the desk so that she spilled ink on him. Prudence Dimm, the teacher, made Tilly sit outside all morning as punishment.
Tilly’s memories of the past are jumbled and vague, which implies that they may not be reliable. Prudence Dimm chooses to punish Tilly instead of Stewart because Tilly is a social outcast and, therefore, an easy target with no one to defend her. This suggests that while people who are considered insiders in the community can get away with bad or immoral behavior, those without friends in the town are unfairly punished even when they are victims of persecution.
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After school, Stewart and the other boys chased Tilly and attacked her. Stewart headbutted her in the stomach and the boys pulled down her pants and sexually assaulted her. The girls laughed and joked that Tilly was a “bastard.”
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In the present, Marigold Pettyman, Evan Pettyman’s wife, waits anxiously for her husband to get home from work and takes several pills to calm her nerves. She is a panicky woman who keeps her house fastidiously clean. When Evan arrives home, Marigold shrieks at him to take off his shoes. Evan Pettyman is the town councilor. Women try to avoid him because he fondles and gropes them. No one says anything, however, because his son, Stewart, died and because Evan gets things done on the council. Evan also knows how everyone in Dungatar earns a living.
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Themes
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Marigold was very young and shy when she married Evan and she’d just inherited a large sum of money from her father. Throughout their marriage, however, she grew anxious and neurotic—and Stewart’s death affected her badly. Evan puts on the pajamas Marigold cleaned for him and he eats his dinner in the kitchen. Marigold lays out newspaper so that Evan won’t spill crumbs, and she asks him to remove all the doorknobs in the house so that she can clean them.
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Evan complains that he is too busy to help Marigold with housework and he tries to give her a spoonful of her nightly “tonic.” Marigold refuses to open her mouth, so Evan says he will take off the doorknobs. Marigold swallows her medicine and laments that it’s been 20 years since Stewart died. Evan helps Marigold to bed and, when she is asleep, he spreads her legs and sexually assaults her. The next day, Marigold cleans all the door fixtures.
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