Dance of the Happy Shades by Alice Munro - Case Study Example

Dance of the Happy Shades: A Critical Analysis The short story, Dance of the Happy Shades by Alice Munro is a story written about a piano teacher, Miss Marsalles who liked throwing annual parties for all her students. In this book, the mother of the narrator felt that she needed to find excuses for not attending these parties. There were a few things that she did not like about the party. To mention a few: students were expected to perform a recital which was always a boring affair, and given that she had confidence and optimism, unfortunately, her students were not as good and she was always hesitant to criticize their plays, but instead, found pleasure even in their most mediocre offerings. As a result, she was particularly not a good music teacher (615). Secondly, more and more students were not attending the parties. The author writes, ‘there is even a moment, driving into such a party when the question occurs, will anybody else be there?’ (614). In fact, there seemed to be a widening gap between the numbers of students who attended two or three years before. The only new people who Miss Marsalles seemed to get were children from former students. Apart from the above reasons, the venue where the parties were held seemed to get worse over the years. The mother of the narrator, with her friend Marg French, remembered fondly about a previous party. They remembered when it rained and the little hall they were in was full of rain coats that were piled on top of each other because there was no place to hang them up. Dresses for little girls were crushed as they had to squeeze together, and the living room window could not open. In fact, a child nose-bled in that party (614). Over the years, they had moved to shabbier, smaller homes and stuffy homes. The one they were living at that time was in a rundown neighborhood (617). A fourth reason could have been that she did not like Miss Marsalles as well as her sister whom she lived with. Actually, she termed them as a strange looking pair. ‘it was actually an arresting fact that there should not be one but two faces like that in the world, both long, gravel colored, kindly and grotesque with enormous noses and tiny , red sweet- tempered and short- sighted eyes. It must finally have come to seem like a piece of luck to them to be so ugly, a protection against life to be marked in so many ways……’ (616). Finally, Miss Marsalles end- year gifts were a point of dislike. The gifts included books she handed over to children that they would never read, pictures they would never hang up, or boxed games they would never play as they were so complicated (616). By going to the parties that she did not like, she felt some sense of an act of loyalty. This was a yearly tradition and sacrificing one afternoon would not hurt. She felt that if she missed any of the parties, Miss Marsalles would be hurt as she believed that all children loved music (615). She thought that by attending the party, she was doing Miss Marsalles a favor. Her not being a convincing liar, she was not able to come up with a good excuse to miss the party hence she had to attend each of them religiously. In addition, these parties offered an avenue where former students would meet and catch up: “here they found themselves year after year- a group of busy, youngish women…who had complained for a week previously about time lost. The fuss over the children dresses, and, above all, the boredom, but who were drawn together by a rather implausible allegiance- not so much to Miss Marsalles as to the ceremonies of their children, to a more exacting pattern of life which had been breaking apart even then survived” (616). This was a motivation for attending the party for all the mothers. When the mother was young, she too attended the recitals but she did not gain much as Miss Marsalles was not a good teacher. While she was growing up, she must have believed too that all children love music. In fact, she too had enrolled her daughter for the recital classes. As she was growing up, she might not have loved the recitals as much but by enrolling her daughter for the same classes that she attended, showed that somehow, she felt that music was necessary. With time, she had moved to the suburbs and she now felt that piano classes were no longer important as they once were when she was young. In fact, she felt that dancing was more favorable for the development of the children (615). The narrator was raised by the mother attending the recitals herself. In fact part of the reason why her mother attended the parties was so that she could take her daughter. She was keen to stick to the traditions of attending the annual parties that were held by Miss Marsalles. This is because her mother always made her to go irrespective of her not liking them at all. Her daughter was slowly learning the aspect of being loyal to her roots. Just like the mother had attended recital classes and annual parties; she also, was following the same trend. She was also raised to be polite, for instance, when the children who had Down syndrome were playing the musicals, she would see lack of approval for these children from her mother but she never made any comments about it. As a matter of fact, she kept it to herself, just like the mother and the other women in the room: ‘for it is a matter of politeness surely not to look closely at such children, and yet where else can you look during a piano performance but at the performer?’ (617). Though this children had features that one would be tempted to stare, she was polite not to. During that time, children with Down syndrome were being institutionalized. Therefore, when the narrator was raised up, she was not taught that it was important to look at such children as her equals, but rather, she looked at them as being lesser than her. In the book, it is stated that when one of the girls with Down syndrome played a good rendition, they were all quiet. The narrator said that ‘the music carries with it the freedom of great unemotional happiness’ (618). The narrator was raised by a middle class, sophisticated mother. When she entered the room where the party was being held, just like her mother, and all the other mothers that were in the room, she looked around the room judging everything and communicated disapprovingly to the others. She did not love the teacher: ‘she is already feeling more sophisticated’ (617). From the chapters, it was clear that the narrator’s mother did not want to attend the parties anymore. Attending the parties was an act that she had to do so that Miss Marsalles would not be angry. Her daughter too, who was part of the reason that made her attend, had also begun to be swept by the wave of sophistication, making her dislike her teacher Miss Marsalles to some level. Also, the guests who were attending the parties seemed to reduce each time and the one person whom she thought they would suffer through the party together, Marg French, missed the party, and this was her final blow. She started to realize that she would no longer stand these parties anymore. She never liked them anyway, as they were not doing her any good nor adding any value to her. Reading this book leaves one wondering who the shades were. Would they be the parents who just attended the parties as a way of martyrdom? Whose attitudes of superiority and sophistication got in their way of enjoying the wonderful connections between life, people and art? Or could the shades be Miss Marsalles and the children from Green Hill School who still enjoyed the recitals, difficult to understand the social civilization? (621). Work Cited Munro, Alice. Dance of the Happy Shades: And Other Stories. New York, NY: Vintage, 1998. Print. Read More