Irritation

Irritation

Have you ever had a fight with your significant other only to find out something you did not intend to? Maybe you were just mad at him or her for acting a certain way. You might have actually intended the conversation to go in an entirely different direction. Whatever the case, it ended up in an awful fight that ended up in you getting hurt. Irwin Shaw’s story “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses” does just that. The story shows how a happily married couple, Michael and Frances, can go from having a nice walk down the street together, to fighting about the way Michael looks at other girls. France finally just forgets about the whole thing and goes out to the country with him. This story makes me irritated first at Frances, then at Michael, and finally at both of them.

In the beginning of the story it seems to me that Frances was overreacting to the way Michael looked at other girls. They were both out walking down the street together, when Frances notices Michael looking at another girl across the street. Then she started to complain that he never looks at her like that anymore and the other girls do not have anything she does not have. To me she seemed to be very jealous of the other girls. Frances does not seem to have a relevant reason to pick a fight with Michael and this is very irritating. It seems to me that Frances was trying to find a fault with Michael, which started a fight.

Michael, on the other hand, did not seem to have any faults, at first. Then when he starts telling Frances about all the different types of girls he likes to watch. He does not see anything wrong with the way he acted. It started to seem like Michael really did spend too much time watching other girls. Then he stated that, in a way, he wanted all the girls he looked at. Michael, to me, was acting very foolish and immature. He was acting like a child in a candy store without any money; looking at all the different kinds and wanting each and every one but at the same time knowing that he can not have them. At this point of the story Michael