Love and Fidelity in a Short Story by Shaw
Irwin Shaw (1913-1984), was a novelist, short story writer, and playwright born in New York City whose many works often contained socially relevant themes focused on modern life (Perkins, 965). In "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses," Shaw (6) describes a "happily married man" named Michael whose wife, Frances, notices that he always watches and then discusses pretty women that he passes in the street. In this brief story, Michael reveals to his wife that not only does he like looking at pretty women, "sometimes I feel I would like to be free" and that it is likely that some day he is "going to make a move" (Shaw, 11).
For most married couples, marriage is associated with monogamy and fidelity even though sexual satisfaction and sexual activity in marriage tends to decline over time (Baron and Byrne, 341). Indeed, as Coleman (537) noted, sexual infidelity is the number one reason that most marriages end in divorce. This suggests that both men and women tend to value fidelity in their marital partner and to agree with Frances that days are ruined when a partner looks "as though you were dying to run after every skirt on Fifth Avenue" (Shaw, 7).
Michael is the kind of man who looks at everything, "at women and men and subway excavations and moving pictures and the little flowers of the field" (Shaw, 6). His wife is not necessarily insecure for no reason. She is certainly aware that a man who needs to look so assiduously at all passing women is the kind of man who will some day act on an impulse and be unfaithful. She recognizes that the look in his eyes directed toward other women is "the way you looked at me the first time" (Shaw, 8).
Michael's reluctant revelation that he cannot help looking at any and all women who cross his path is also the revelation that he is a potential adulterer who feels "as though I'm at a picnic in this city" (Shaw, 10). He does not happi...