Dizzying Duplicity: Women's Dance of Discord

Dizzying Duplicity: Women's Dance of Discord

An examination of Dorothy Parker's "The Waltz" and Tillie Olsen's "Tell Me a Riddle" reveals a telling commonality: the cyclical redundancy that characterizes women's lives in early to mid-period twentieth century America.. Dorothy Parker's piece is an amusing allegorical short story in which the protagonist finds herself dancing with a partner with whomshesecretlywouldprefernottodance. However,suchanoptionisunavailableto women in polite society. Parker's narrator/protagonist is internally impudent but externally compliant as her rebellion eventually dissipates and she dances her life and her autonomy away. Olson‘s "Tell Me a Riddle" tells of a dying woman who, through the experience of losing her health and her mental acuity, re-acquaints herself with and reclaims the strong woman she once was. Olsen's use of repetitive phrasing for her protagonist, Eva, echoes the rhythms of the conventional waltz in Parker‘s story,illustrating how the boundaries of women's lives are blurred between self and social expectations, and marked by a deadening repetitiveness. Torn between allegiance to self and obligation to others, these women find themselves trapped by the social dance of fe min init y.