The front cover of the first edition of Rosalie Ham’s novel The Dressmaker—before Kate Winslet co-opted future editions for an indeterminate amount of time—somewhat notoriously described it as “an Australian gothic novel of love, hate, and haute couture.” Love and hate are covered in depth and goodness knows there the couture is quite haute, but is it really a gothic tale? When one thinks of gothic novels one likely calls to mind stories featuring dank castle, ghosts, isolated settings, a notably absent amount of great intellect in the characters, and a dank castle and ghosts. Yep, it is those castles and ghosts—whether real or imagined—that seem to be the essential qualities of a gothic novel. Since castles and ghosts are in very short supply in the novel, one has to question whether it really qualifies as a gothic novel. But that would make for a very mundane work of analysis.
More interesting is one particular choice the author makes that really seems to capture the idiosyncratic spirit of the novel. One can very easily find out enough information to write a paper about the gothic qualities of the novel just as easily as one can construct a compare/contrast thesis unifying the novel and Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible as examples of stories that deal with the social disease of extreme conformity and rejection of the threat of independent thinking. If it is truly fascinating topic for an analytical paper that has already been covered from just about every angle, however, one should read The Dressmaker with special attention paid to Shakespeare.
Ultimately, the novel becomes a story of revenge. To that end, Shakespeare is responsible for writing the most famous revenge tragedy of all time: Hamlet. Hamlet’s mother is name Gertrude and there is a major character in the novel called Trudy which is short for Gertrude. So, of course, the Shakespearean tragedy that is central to the revenge which the main character carries out at the end of the novel could only be…Macbeth.
Wait, what? Macbeth? Macbeth is not even a revenge tragedy. And if the author already had the Gertrude name in mind, she could easily have avoided Hamlet and gone with another of Shakespeare’s revenge stories. Like, say, Titus Andronicus, which features enough blood to make Pulp Fiction look like A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The genius at work in The Dressmaker is the author’s willingness to set up expectations and then subvert them. (Starting, perhaps, on a puckish note of claiming it is a gothic novel and then not delivering on that promise. But that is, as indicated, a pursuit best left to each individual taste.) The title does not indicate the incendiary revenge story it becomes. The revelations about the secret life of Farrat are such that one is reluctant even to mention them lest they be spoiled. Foremost among the subversion of expectations, however, are the introductions of Gertrude Pratt and her husband William. The name Gertrude, as mentioned, will immediately bring to mind allusions to Hamlet for anyone remotely familiar with literature. And the characterization of her husband whom she so easily and manipulates also calls to mind the very subtle way in which Gertrude manipulates her brother-in-law turned king and husband. At the same time, however, William also features personality traits which draw a direct connection between him and guess who: Hamlet! Let’s put it this way: William has mommy problems, too, and these problems drive him to marry Gertrude. So he is basically trying to move away from being a mere prince to becoming a king through marriage only to find that he is just as much at the mercy of a wife as he was a mother. The relationship that that is portrayed between Gertrude and William looks a heck of a lot like something from Hamlet and not much at all like that between the Macbeths.
That circumstance will change, however, as the author makes good on her deliver to subvert expectations by going all-in on the Macbeth connection. What make it all so fascinating, however, is not the connection between Gertrude, William and the Macbeths, but the far more intensely satisfying complexity of the juxtaposition with Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius and the ghosts of the past which haunt the characters in the present. Dig deep into that pattern and the potential exists to stitch together some really impressive literary couture at the highest levels of haute.
