The short story "Red Dress" by Alice Munro is about a young girl's first high school dance. Her home and school environment determined her attitude towards the dance. This girl's home life was bad. She was constantly put down mentally by her mother, even in front of her friend Lonnie, to the point that the narrator envied Lonnie on account that her mother died and she lived alone with her father. "'I doubt if she appreciates it.' She enraged me, talking like this to Lonnie, as if Lonnie were grown up and I were still a child." Her mother was obscene in the house; the description that is given would make one sick. It is said that she did not take care of herself in the house, and exposed