and what she is saying is highly comical and sarcastic. It shows us how she feels she should act, which is polite and happy, even though she does not feel this way. Her thoughts and actions define verbal irony. The Standard of Living is about two young women who go to Fifth Avenue every weekend to window shop and dream. Annabel and Midge devised a game to entertain themselves while walking the avenue. The game is: “what would you do if you had a million dollars?” (The Standard of Living) This game has a provision though; you must spend all the money on yourself. That is what is supposed to make the game hard. As the girls window shop they discuss things they wish they had for themselves. They erupt in a dispute over a silver-fox coat, are they common or not common? Then, one morning midge asked Annabel again and she answers “a mink coat” and everyone was happy. Later they went shopping and saw a pair of pearls that they adore. They got up the tenacity to go in and inquire about them. Upon finding out they would cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, they are sad and offended that it would take up a quarter of the money already. Their faces are in gloom and their heads are low. Midge all of the sudden says, “ Suppose there was this terribly rich person… and so this person dies, just like going to sleep, and leaves you ten million dollars. Now what is the first thing you do?” (The Standard of Living) This is a sarcastic view of how women are perceived to be, materialistic and petty, even though there is more to them than that. In these three short stories works of Dorothy Parker’s, there is an evident theme that is the core of the story, entrapment. The stories tell of women who are trapped in a precarious position because of society’s standards. Hazel in The Big Blonde is expected to be a “good sport”. The woman in The Waltz does not want to dance with the man, bu...
