Extra Credit Blog

The story of Sissy is very much like the story of Ellen Montgomery in The Wide Wide World, only the big and overwhelming difference is their genders. Both Sissy and Ellen spend much of their time at home and their closest companions are their moms, although Sissy doesn't seem to have quite the attachment that Ellen possesses. I find it interesting that both stories incorporate dress making as a vital aspect of the plots. Sissy makes Margie lovely dresses in order to show his love for her and almost as a bribe to keep her around because he enjoys her so much. Ellen must go to the store in order to get marino to have a new dress that will suit her for her future. I find the following passage interesting because it shows how Ellen's mom, who is wise of the necessities of a young girl, knows the necessity of her having a good dress. Ellen says, "...don't be in the least bit worried about my clothes. You know how little I think or care for them" and Ellen's mother responds with a smile and then "presently resumed her anxious look out the window" (Warner 36). The vitality of little girls having nice dresses is stressed because having these things was necessary if a girl was one day to find a husband. Sissy, although seemingly less interested in preparing Margie for her future, still stresses having nice dresses and seems to be living vicariously through Margie. He is a boy yet he enjoys dresses, having grown up dressed like a girl, yet being a boy he does not have to have nice dresses to secure his future or liklihood of getting married in the future.
Should it matter so much that Sissy is a boy while Ellen is a girl? It did in the 19th century for sure, with their strict and separate expectations for girls and boys. Us as readers in the 21st century can look on the text and maybe be more accepting of Sissy because there are more publicly feminine men. I think of Sissy as Clint off of the show What Not to Wear, and Sissy grows up to be a milliner. The idea of a "boy-milliner" was "striking" (Kellogg 564) yet Sissy lived a very successful life and eventually got married. It's interesting to note that the dresses that both Sissy and Ellen were so concerned with helped both of them fulfill the expectations of their different genders. Ellen's dress allowed her to eventually get married, a necessity of girls at the time to secure their future. Sissy's concern with dresses turned into a way for him to make money, allowing him to get married and have a family because his dresses allowed him to fulfill the financial duty that men have to their family.