The Black Dress

Before she leaves for Tangier, Lucy purchases an expensive dress which comes to symbolize the carefully crafted social persona which she presents to the outside world to cover up her inner violent, cunning self. It is a “dark, belted shirtdress that had cost as much as one month’s rent” (29). She wears it when she shows up on Alice’s doorstep, “conscious of the fact that I would be seeing Alice for the first time in more than a year, I had wanted it to be evident how well I had done since those days” (29). Her desire to appear successful and attractive in her friend’s eyes at first seems innocent enough, but as her pursuit of Alice grows more and more vicious, it becomes clear that the dress is simply one more aspect of the shell of normalcy which she maintains for the...