Sharon Olds the Blue Dress

Idealization and Dissappointed

The speaker in "The Blue Dress", by Sharon Olds, idealizies her father but is soon disappointed

when she realizes her father is much different from what she picture. The girl is led to believe that a blue dress given to on her birthday was from her father. Later on she realizes that she was mistaken and that her father in all actually did not give her the blue dress. Instead of letting go of the facade her father had created she embraced it as an actual reality:

-when I went away to boarding school of I wore it all the time there, loving the feel of it, just casually mentioning sometimes it was a gift from my father, wanting in those days to appear to have something whether it was true or a lie I didn't care, just to have something. (194).

Even though her father had not actually sent her the dress she believed the lie was more beautiful than the truth. When it comes to life sometimes it takes convinceing one's self that a lie is the truth to become truly

happy.

The father's lie made his daughter happy and reminded her of her of him and his love. Her father had never given her a present before and it made her happy especially since it fit her perfectly:

-I had never had a present from him-and there was a blue shirtwaist dress blue as the side of a blue teal disguised to go in safely on the steel-blue water. I put it on, a perfect fit, I liked that it was not too sexy, just a blue dress for a 14-year-old daughter- (193-194).

The thought had made her feel special to him. Unfortunately, she did not get to hold on to that special feeling for long she soon learned that it was not a gift from her father. Learning the the truth behind the origins of the dress did not effect her she decided to wear the dress anyway:

-my mother said that he had not picked out the dress just told her not to get something too expenecive, and then had not even sent a check for it, that's the kind of man he was. So I never wore it again in her sight- (194)

Though she was disappointed

when she found out the truth she held on to the feelings she had before she knew the truth and it kept her happy.

The girl was left without a father after a