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Summary Of The Waltz By Dorothy Parker

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Known for her witty and luminous insights into the social and political upheaval of the female role (Poplawski 565-6), Dorothy Parker was an influential female writer of the early twentieth century. Despite the developing emancipatory movement, the legal and social position of the sexes in early twentieth century America was, although already more advanced than a few generations before, still not anywhere near equal (Lumsden 75). The resistantly prevailing conception of a gendered hierarchy is especially salient in the two conflicting voices used in Parker 's allusive short story “The Waltz”, published in 1933, which on the surface depicts the ludicrous internal struggle of a young woman feeling socially obliged to accept a dance proposal, although resenting both, her partner and her situation. In Parker 's narrative, the female “narrating I” (Meyer 60) is caught in the dichotomy between the traditional, out-dated female role expectations she enacts in speech and behavior, and her own, deviating aspirations, mediated through the prevalent interior monologue. This stream of consciousness reveals not only her sarcastic mockery but also comprises a more serious message about the early twentieth century social and political gender roles. In this context, the following paper argues that Dorothy Parker 's “The Waltz” tells a story beneath a story, that within the brief, amusing sequence of a ballroom situation, the sad story of an unhappy marriage is told. At first, several

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