And Women Must Weep

Key Facts about ‘And Women Must Weep’:

 Full Title: ‘And Women Must Weep’

 When Published: 1931
 Literary Period: Modernism, Realism
 Genre: Short Story, Bildungsroman
 Setting: Australia around the turn of the 20th century
 Climax: Dolly locks herself in her room, takes off her dress, and cries.
 Antagonist: Patriarchal social pressures
 Point of View: Third Person

- Author’s Background
Name: Henry Handel Richardson
Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson was born in 1870 in Melbourne, Australia. During
her childhood, her father suffered from financial and health struggles, and her family
moved from town to town in Australia. After her father’s death, Richardson attended a
boarding school, the Presbyterian Ladies’ College in Melbourne, where she excelled in
music. Later, Richardson studied music in Leipzig, Germany, to become a professional
pianist. But after she married in 1895, she began a literary career instead, publishing
articles and translations of Scandinavian literature. She moved to London in 1903 with
her husband, took up the male pseudonym Henry Handel Richardson, and published
her first novel, Maurice Guest, in 1908. Much of Richardson’s writing drew from her own
life experiences. Her second novel, The Getting of Wisdom, was inspired by her time at
the Presbyterian Ladies’ College, and her successful trilogy, The Fortunes of Richard
Mahony, was based on her family history, which she returned to Australia to research.
After Richardson’s husband died, Richardson moved from London to Sussex. She
published a volume of short stories called The End of a Childhood and Other Stories in
1934 and her last novel in 1939. Richardson died in 1946 in England. Similar to
Pakistani “trolley culture”, when the young girl serves her suitors a trolley of goodies,
symbolizing how they’re supposed to serve in this society.
- Historical context
When Richardson published her novels and short stories, it was common for women to
write under male pen names so that they and their work could be taken seriously. At the
turn of the 20th century in western society, women did not have the same rights as men.
Formal balls like the one Dolly attends in “‘And Women Must Weep’” reflected this
gender inequality. Historically, balls were opportunities for upper-class young women to
be introduced to male suitors when they were eligible for marriage. Marriage was often
women’s only option, and women’s value depended on their connections to men. During
Richardson’s active career, women’s rights groups were fighting for equality, and
Richardson’s own sister was involved in the suffragette movement. The spreading of
feminist ideas likely influenced Richardson to highlight girls’ and women’s intimate
experiences in her fiction.
- Summary
Set in Australia around the turn of the 20th century, “‘And Women Must Weep’” is about
an adolescent girl’s first ball. Dolly is thrilled to be attending her first grown-up event. As
she prepares for the dance, which her Auntie Cha is bringing her to, Dolly delights in her
beautiful dress and her own prettiness. She waits for Auntie Cha to finish getting ready,
ignoring Miss Biddons’s advice to sit down because she’s too nervous for the ball and
concerned that she might crush her dress.
Finally, Dolly and Auntie Cha are ready to leave. Dolly’s spirits are slightly dampened
when Miss Biddons warns her not to forget her steps in the waltz and Auntie Cha scolds
her for looking too serious. Dolly accidentally tears a ribbon off her dress while stepping
out of the wagonette, and Auntie Cha chides her for clumsiness. Dismayed and self-
conscious, Dolly enters the public hall and hides behind Auntie Cha, noticing that other
women’s dresses are even prettier than hers.
Auntie Cha makes Dolly sit in the front row of seats and display her program to show
she wants to dance. Dolly obeys, but no one asks her to dance. Through Auntie Cha’s
interventions, Dolly dances with the Master of Ceremonies and the son of her aunt’s
“lady-friend,” but Dolly is embarrassed that she has only been invited to dance out of
pity. She is also partnered with a rude gentleman who dances badly and worsens her
humiliation. Afterward, Dolly sits out of the dancing and tries to look agreeable, as
Auntie Cha reminds her to do. She smiles at young men in the hopes that they will
choose her, but she is ignored. She grows upset at the unfairness of the ball and wishes
she were an old woman or at home in bed.
The rest of the evening goes poorly as well. Dolly’s mouth is too dry to eat, and her only
other dance partners are the lady-friend’s son again and a young boy. Dolly and Auntie
Cha leave early. On the way home, Auntie Cha stays silent, and Dolly tries not to cry. As
soon as they arrive home, Dolly shuts herself alone in her room and throws her crushed
dress on the floor. She overhears Auntie Cha declare to Miss Biddons that she “didn’t
take.” Dolly feels horribly ashamed of her failure to attract any gentlemen at the ball, a
failure that will follow her all her life. Yet she also feels like this failure is not her fault,
because she tried her best to do everything right. She realizes she didn’t even want to
be chosen at the ball; she was only pretending. Dolly cannot hold her tears back
anymore and cries.
 - Themes
1. Growing Up
“‘And Women Must Weep,’” a story of a young girl’s first ball in Australia around the turn
of the 20th century, is fundamentally about an adolescent experience. Dolly’s youthful
naivety and innocence shine through her confidence and excitement for the dance. Her
enthusiasm reflects her hopes for the opportunities that her entry into the “grown-up”
world will bring her. But the ball doesn’t proceed as Dolly wishes, which reflects the
difficulties of transitioning into a new stage of life. Throughout the ball, Dolly worries how
other people perceive her, sinks into embarrassment and disappointment when few men
want to dance with her, and burns with shame for her social failures. She leaves the ball
early and isolates herself at home.
In the end, Dolly cries, overwhelmed with humiliation. Her optimistic expectations for
adulthood did not align with the dismaying reality she has now experienced. Most
importantly, Dolly recognizes society’s unfair standards. Even if she tries her best to live
up to society’s expectations for her as a young woman, she will not be able to reach
them, through no fault of her own. As Dolly comes to understand that she may not even
want to conform to society’s expectations, she not only abandons her naivety but also
gains deeper self-knowledge than she had before. Although the story takes place within
a single evening, Dolly undergoes an internal transformation; she grows up. Through
Dolly’s experience of the ball, Richardson portrays the loss of naivety as a central
experience of adolescence and suggests that growing up is a painful process of
obtaining a new perspective on oneself, the world, and how one relates to society.

2. Social Pressures vs. Internal Desires

In “‘And Women Must Weep,’” pressures to look and act in socially approved ways are
pervasive. At the ball, Dolly must look pretty, smile, present herself as cheerful and
gracious at all times, dance without mistake, eat daintily, and catch the interest of young
men. These social expectations are taught to Dolly and externally enforced by older
women. Auntie Cha and Miss Biddons frequently remind Dolly of the importance of
meeting these expectations, and they chastise her when she doesn’t display the ideal
behavior. Dolly also internalizes these social expectations and puts pressure on herself
to live up to them in order to be socially successful. When her appearance is marred by
her torn dress, she missteps during a waltz, and she is largely ignored by the men
whom she was supposed to attract, Dolly believes she has failed and will be scorned by
people around her for the rest of her life. Her inability to measure up to social pressures
crushes Dolly with embarrassment and shame.
Yet, after the ball, Dolly realizes that she never felt any real desire within herself to
accomplish what society expected her to accomplish. She didn’t enjoy putting herself on
display at the ball, and she only pretended to want any of “the gentlemen” she saw
there. The social pressures she faces harm Dolly because they punish her for not
achieving perfection and because they obscure her individual desires. The critical
moment of Dolly’s growing up is the point when she discerns that her inner desires are
separate from society’s expectations for her. The story suggests that reaching maturity
requires the difficult yet crucial understanding that one’s internal desires may be at odds
with the desires society pressures one to adopt.

3. Women, Beauty Standards, and Patriarchy

While “‘And Women Must Weep’” concentrates on an episode from one young girl’s life,
the story is also concerned with women’s position in society on a larger scale. Through
Dolly’s experience of her first ball, the narrative highlights gendered double standards in
a patriarchal society that impose strict, reductive, and detrimental social limitations on
women but not on men. In the story, women’s value depends on whether or not their
physical appearance measures up to society’s narrow ideals of beauty. Dolly’s
preoccupation with being pretty shows how strong the social pressure is for girls and
women to live up to society’s beauty standards. Auntie Cha and Miss Biddons reinforce
these standards by constantly focusing on Dolly’s outward appearance. For instance,
Auntie Cha chides Dolly for being clumsy when she tears her dress, and she scolds her
for looking too serious. Dolly must look pleasant and agreeable for the entirety of the
ball, or else no one will want her. But men are not judged as harshly as women by their
appearances, nor do men face the same negative social repercussions for failing to
attract partners with their looks.

The story also shows clear power imbalances between men and women. At the ball,
men have the agency to select their dance partners. Dolly learns that men are free from
the burden of perfection and intense social scrutiny, as they can dance poorly without
apology and be impolite without consequence. Meanwhile, women, including Dolly,
must passively wait for men to choose them to dance; whether or not they are chosen
determines their worth. Women also face blame and social stigma for failing to conform
to demanding social expectations, as Dolly realizes when she hears Auntie Cha declare
that she “‘didn’t take’” at the ball—in other words, she was a failure. This unequal
relationship between women and men within a patriarchal system disproportionately
hurts women on a societal level. Although Dolly feels alone in this harmful system, the
story’s title, “‘And Women Must Weep,’” suggests that she isn’t the only one to
experience such unfairness. According to these words, all women “must weep”—just as
Dolly does—because they face the same suffering in a society that mistreats and
undervalues them.
- Symbols
1. Dolly's Dress
Dolly’s dress symbolizes her naivety about growing up—a naivety that she loses as she
transitions out of girlhood into womanhood. The physical changes her dress undergoes
throughout the evening mirror the emotional transformation that Dolly experiences over
the course of the story. Like her dress, Dolly’s naivety begins fresh and bright but slowly
becomes crushed until she discards it. At first, Dolly’s dress is magnificently light, airy,
and beautiful. Its pale blue color and soft muslin fabric symbolize Dolly’s innocence, and
the way it floats around her gives it a youthful quality that reflects Dolly’s young age.
Dolly’s wonder at the dress’s prettiness is childlike and represents her excitement to be
grown-up now.
Additionally, the dress is for a grown-up event that Dolly has never attended before,
indicating her lack of experience in adult society. These details about the dress all
emphasize Dolly’s naivety at the beginning of the story. But her time at the ball causes
her naivety and her dress to deteriorate. When her dress tears, Dolly’s naïve confidence
also wavers. As Dolly grows more embarrassed and ashamed that no one wants to
dance with her, her dress gets flattened from sitting for so long and clenching her
sweating hands in her lap. When Dolly returns home, tears off her dress, and throws it
on the floor, she also symbolically throws off her former naivety. Both her dress and her
childish perspective have been crushed by the humiliations of the ball. By the end of the
story, Dolly is disillusioned about growing up because she has experienced a
humiliating and discouraging aspect of womanhood. Just as her dress loses its glamor,
Dolly also loses her optimistic naivety about what it means to grow up.

2. Dolly's Program
Dolly’s program symbolizes the social expectations that dictate how she should act at
the ball. At formal dances, programs are booklets or cards that women carry for listing
dance titles and recording their dance partners’ names. Auntie Cha instructs Dolly to
hold out her program to signal her availability and willingness to dance. In the same
way, Dolly is supposed to put herself on display—not just her program—so that she
appears ready and eager. Just as the program is meant to draw attention to Dolly, Dolly
herself is expected to attract gentleman with her outward appearance and demeanor.
However, Dolly’s program doesn’t get filled with names, and Dolly doesn’t fulfill social
expectations. That her program remains empty symbolizes Dolly’s failure to conform to
a woman’s customary role at a ball. When staring at the blank card becomes too
embarrassing, Dolly lets it slip onto the floor out of sight. By letting go of the program,
Dolly symbolically acknowledges that she hasn’t been able to live up to the pressures
placed upon her by Auntie Cha, Miss Biddons, and society.
- Analysis & Quotes
Within the first paragraph, the undertones and themes of this short story become clear.
This story examines women’s vulnerability in a male-dominated society, as well as the
social pressures they face.
Dolly, the main character in “And Women Must Weep,” begins the story by recounting
her preparations for a Leap Year Ball. Her behaviours exemplify the subconscious
desire of women which is to be told at every juncture of their life how to behave. Women
have been taught to be flawless and airbrushed in order to appeal to and please men.
‘Instead of sitting, she stood very stiff and straight at the window … her long white
gloves hanging loose over one arm so not to soil them,’
Auntie Cha represents the female figure in every girl’s life who instructs her on how to
act, speak or not speak and appeal to men, among other things, which is something that
girls are taught from the beginning. Auntie Cha exemplifies her common role by
meticulously inspecting and ironing out every crease, both literal and figurative, that
could possibly turn a gentleman away, as this is the greatest fear women have.
Chastising in a way that appears to be helpful and kind only serves to reinforce the
societal expectation that women must achieve and maintain perfection in order to be
deemed suitable by a man :
“Now, Dolly, remember not to look too serious. Or you’ll frighten the gentlemen off.”
“For goodness sake, try and look agreeable,”
Dolly’s internal reaction, when asked or commanded to dance, exemplifies how women
will put themselves through things they don’t want to do in order to please the man and
conform to society’s pressures and rules. The use of phrases like ‘take me’ and ‘taken’
in reference to being chosen by a man reinforces the idea that women are male
property that can be owned and traded from one man to the next. Dolly’s shame at not
being “taken” and “failing to attract gentlemen at the ball” exemplifies how social
pressure on women can be crushing, because a woman is totally meaningless without a
man.