Annotations ↓
5 Questions I would like to ask the Author
(1) What do you think your mother’s motivation was to stay beautiful all the time?
(2) What made you want to write this memoir?
(3) Have your mother bother you?
(4) Do you think the birthday dress was a gift to make you happy or just to make your mother happy, in other words, to compensate her own pity?
(5) Did you feel difficult to write the memories that relate to your privacy too much? What makes you continue writing about them?
A RESPONSE to the Text
In Stephanie Hart’s “Clothes,” “Shopping,” and “Birthday Cake Dress”, Stephanie Hart thinks back on her childhood by using clothes as a clue. The author interprets how her mother built own unique style in clothes through her lifetime even if she was frail before death. The author also used two events, shopping with her mother and celebrating her birthday with her family, to illustrate how her mother projected her own sense of beauty onto the author.
One quotation that intrigues me most is in the end of the excerpt “clothes”. Stephanie Hart writes, “When my mother was thin and frail shortly before her death, she often wore light colored angora sweaters and beige silk slacks. She would sit in a white swivel chair with her legs crossed, emanating stylishness and grace.”[1] This quote reminds me that beauty has nothing to do with looks and age. It is about one’s attitude about life. It is about one’s taste of beauty. I reckon the author’s mother is a person who is persistent in searching for not only visual beauty in herself but also for beauty and essence in the real life.
I think the clothes is meaningful in the childhood of the author’s mother, according to the mother’s memory of the gift she prepared by herself on her lonely eighteen’s birthday. When she was lonely, clothes become a silent friend. At the same time, the clothes have once witnesses her loneliness as well. They became mutual companion spiritually, to some extent. The mother relies on clothes and gets completely attached to clothes so she can avoid thinking about her mother’s death and her father’s new girlfriend.
Also, the clothes is meaningful in Stephanie Hart’s childhood, because Stephanie’s memory about her birthday is strongly connected with the dress she wore on that day. According to the text, “The cake is the color of my new dress and has the same lace-like pattern.” [2] Therefore, Clothes is not only second skin for people, but also can shape our memory and keep memory vivid.
I enjoyed these excerpt because the author used five sensory to illustrate her memories, which makes her memory become more solid and real for the readers. For example, “A scent of perfume filled the air”[3] “The fabric is soft”.[4] Also, she used lots of psychological description, some of them are in a humorous tone. For example, “Suddenly, I wish my body were a lump of clay I could sculpt into a firmer, leaner version of itself.”[5] “I think I am crying, but the tears are internal.”[6] Moreover, it motivates me that clothes can be used as one’s avatar too since the author thinks clothes can represent her mother, and it may also be her mother’s camouflage. In other words, the author’s mother had different preference of clothing at different stage of her lifetime.
[1] Stephanie Hart, “Clothes,” The Sun.
[2] Stephanie Hart, Mirror Mirror (New York: And Then Press, 2012), 103.
[3] Stephanie Hart, “Clothes,” The Sun.
[4] Stephanie Hart, Mirror Mirror (New York: And Then Press, 2012), 102.
[5] Ibid., 86.
[6] Ibid.
