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The Waltz

What do you do when a man asks you to dance? This is a metaphor for the larger societal control men exercise over women with their charm, wit, and greatness. We cannot refuse to dance. More specifically, I cannot refuse to eat.

The following is a piece I wrote earlier this year for a class on Gender and Language

2.7.05
Response to “The Waltz” (The New Yorker)


Dorothy Parker’s “The Waltz” is written in a stream of consciousness style that hints at the duplicitous role of women’s language. The narrator is a performer. Her oral speech contrasts with her inner thoughts. For example, when her unnamed dancing partner kicks her shin, she thinks, “For God’s sake, don’t kick, you idiot; this is only my second down”—a football reference, atypical of women’s speech. But out loud, she says, “Oh, no no, no. Goodness, no it didn’t hurt the least little bit. And it was my fault. Really it was. Truly. It really was all my fault.” Her verbal speech, however, is marked by Lakoffesque stereotypical mechanisms like qualifiers, intensifiers, empty adjectives. She overuses words like “lovely” and “really” and “Oh!” Her internal monologue is intense, biting, a series of overstatements and understatements: I am Outraged Womanhood. I’ll see you in hell first. The events of my life are passing before my eyes. There was the time I was in a hurricane in the West Indies, there was the day I got my head cut open in the taxi smash, there was that summer that the sailboat kept capsizing… Although her thoughts are rambling, illogical (stereotypical of women’s speech as well), this inner voice is unfeminine, brutish even. She is mercilessly honest and critical of her dancing partner but she maintains a façade of a happy, dancing woman. The discord between internal thought patterns and external verbal speech suggests that the narrator is indeed performing. She smiles when she wants to scream; she continues to dance when she wants to kill her partner. What can you say when a man asks you to dance with him? she poses as the central question of her piece. Apparently, one must superficially comply and then subversively critique in one’s head. She learns and performs femininity and its appropriate verbal speech but her personal, private thoughts need not comply with social regulations.

Comments

  1. Anonymous12/10/2005

    lol you could just say no...

    -roman

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sadia12/10/2005

    you cant just say no. its not that simple, genius. it is somehow more difficult to say no to a guy than to a girl. i cannot explain this adequately. its like pretending to be available when you're really not.

    most women have trouble saying no. this is a fact. according to oprah. and others, too.

    sadia

    ReplyDelete

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