Themes
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 the bar, Dungatar’s football team drinks beer and the players discuss their game plan for the finals. Purl listens anxiously and Fred tells her that there will soon be something to celebrate. Purl and Fred lovingly embrace each other. The team heads outside for training and a nervous crowd of fans gathers to watch them. After this, the players go home to bed and the supporters go back to the bar. Dungatar hasn’t won the finals for several decades; the players from the last victorious team are old men now.
Dungatar is an extremely close-knit community which values conformity and participation—so long as people participate in the way that the conservative Dungatar residents deem acceptable. Football represents this conformity, as everyone in the town (except for outcasts like Tilly and Molly) participates in it, either as players or supporters. Dungatar residents also dislike social change—they cling to and romanticize the past. This is reflected in their obsession with their prior football victories, even though these took place long ago.
Themes
Purl gossips about Tilly with the men in the bar to distract them from their nerves. One man says that Teddy McSwiney fancies Tilly just as Teddy enters the bar. Teddy winks at Purl when he hears Tilly’s name, but the man says that Tilly is “loose,” like her mother. Hearing this, Teddy grabs the man by the throat and pins him to the bar. Purl begs Teddy to stop—Teddy is Dungatar’s hope for the match tomorrow. Teddy lets the man go and the man shuffles from the bar. That night, in bed, Teddy looks up at the Hill and sees the light on in Tilly’s window.
The conservative Dungatar residents judge Molly because she had Tilly when she was not married. It was considered immoral for unmarried women to have sex, let alone to have children, in the 1950s. The townspeople are judgmental and reject Tilly based on her mother’s past, rather than on her own merit. Although, like Tilly, Teddy is considered something of an outcast in Dungatar, the inhabitants hypocritically accept Teddy because they hope he will win the football for them. They reject Tilly seemingly because they feel that she has nothing to offer them.
Themes
The next day, the Dungatar supporters anxiously watch their team play against Winyerp. Dungatar wins by one point, and the celebration rages all night in Fred and Purl’s bar. At dawn the next day, Beula Harridene walks past the pub and sees people sprawled all over the car park. Fred sits behind the bar and sips a hot drink.
Dungatar is a conservative town—residents value conformity and feel that they are superior to outsiders. Football reflects these attitudes in the novel as the Dungatar residents (apart from outcasts like Tilly and Molly) all participate in games, either as players or as fans. Their desire to beat the other teams, who are from different towns and are, therefore, outsiders, also reflects their belief that they are superior to anyone who is not from Dungatar.
Themes
