Joan attends a ballet class preparing for a performance. Her teacher, Miss Flegg, makes her a mothball instead of a butterfly. A mothball is white and ball-shaped, put in wardrobes to protect clothes from moths. Read the passage by Margaret Atwood and answer the questions.
Miss Flegg put her face down close to mine so I could see the wrinkles around her eyes up close and smell the sour toothpaste smell of her mouth, and said slowly and distinctly, 'You'll do as I say or you won't be in the dance at all. Do you understand?' Being left out altogether was too much for me. I capitulated, but I paid for it. I had to stand in the mothball costume with Miss Flegg's hand on my shoulder while she explained to the other Teenies, in their wispy skirts and shining wings, about the change in plans and my new, starring role. They looked at me, scorn on their painted lips; they were not taken in.
1. What makes Miss Flegg's behaviour unpleasant when she tells Joan about the mothball role?
2. Why does Joan agree to be the mothball?
3. What does the phrase 'they were not taken in' tell us about the other girls?
I went home. I went into the bathroom and locked the door. Then I wept uncontrollably, lying on the floor with my face against the fluffy pink bath mat.
Afterwards I pulled the laundry hamper over so I could stand on it and look into the bathroom mirror. My made-up face had run, there were black streaks down my cheeks like sooty tears and my purple mouth was smudged and swollen. What was the matter with me? It wasn't that I couldn't dance. My mother pleaded briefly with me through the locked bathroom door. I came out, but wouldn't eat any dinner: someone besides me would have to suffer. My mother wiped the makeup off my face, scolding me because it would have to be done again, and we set out once more.
4. Apart from being upset, what other feeling does Joan show in this section, and how do we know?
5. What does the simile 'black streaks down my cheeks like sooty tears' help us picture?
I had to stand enviously off stage, red-faced and steaming in the hated costume, listening to the coughs and the scraping of folding chairs, then watching while the butterflies tinkled through the movements I myself had memorised, I was sure, better than any of them. The worst thing was that I still didn't understand quite why this was being done to me, this humiliation disguised as a privilege.
6. What does the word 'tinkled' suggest about the butterflies' dancing?
7. What does Joan mean by 'this humiliation disguised as a privilege'?
At the right moment Miss Flegg gave me a shove and I lurched onto the stage, trying to look as she had instructed me, as much like a mothball as possible. Then I danced. There were no steps to my dance, as I hadn't been taught any, so I made it up as I went along. I swung my arms, I bumped into the butterflies, I spun in circles, and stamped my feet as hard as I could on the boards of the flimsy stage, until it shook. I threw myself into the part, it was a dance of rage and destruction, tears rolled down my cheeks behind the fur, the butterflies would die; my feet hurt for days afterwards. 'This isn't me,' I kept saying to myself, 'they're making me do it'; yet even though I was concealed in the heavy white costume which flopped about me and made me sweat, I felt ridiculous as if this dance was the truth about me and everyone could see it.
8. How does Joan 'throw herself into the part' of the mothball?
9. What does Joan mean when she says 'This isn't me, they're making me do it'?
The butterflies scampered away on cue and much to my surprise I was left in the centre of the stage, facing an audience that was not only laughing but applauding vigorously. Even when the beauties, the tiny thin ones, trooped back for their curtsey, the laughter and clapping went on, and several people, who must have been fathers rather than mothers, shouted 'Bravo mothball'. It puzzled me that some of them seemed to like my ugly, bulky costume better than the pretty ones of the others.
After the recital Miss Flegg was congratulated on her priceless touch with the mothball. My mother appeared pleased. 'You did fine,' she said, but I still cried that night over my thwarted wings. I would never get a chance to use them now, since I had decided already that much as I loved dancing school I was not going back to it in the autumn. It's true I had received more individual attention than the others, but I wasn't sure it was a kind I liked.
10. Why does the audience applaud Joan's performance so enthusiastically?
11. What does Joan mean by 'my thwarted wings'?
12. What does Joan mean by her final line: 'I wasn't sure it was a kind I liked'?