60 pages • 2 hours read
Julie MurphyDumplin
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Dolly Parton
Julie Murphy starts Dumplin’ with a Dolly Parton quote. Because Willowdean is such a big Dolly Parton fan, Parton plays a huge role in the novel. From the first sentence which reads: “All the best things in my life have started with a Dolly Parton song” (1), Dolly Parton songs follow Willowdean through Will’s good times and bad times. Not only does Will credit their mutual love for Dolly Parton for her friendship with Ellen, Dolly Parton is playing on the radio when Bo first kisses Willowdean. The song playing is not just a song by Parton, but it is a collaboration between Parton and Norah Jones. It’s important the song is a duet as Bo and Willowdean are first starting to work together as a couple.
At the start of the novel, Willowdean admits that to her, Ellen, and Lucy, Dolly Parton is invincible: “It wasn’t just the look of Dolly that drew us in. It was that attitude that came with knowing how ridiculous people though she looked but never changing a thing because she felt good about herself” (26). The men in Willowdean’s life—Bo and Mitch—both question Willowdean’s Dolly Parton obsession. Willowdean tries to explain why she finds Parton so inspiring: “But for Dolly, it’s not dress up or make-believe. It’s her life. And it’s exactly how she chose for it to be” (246).
When Willowdean has a bad day, Ellen tells her to go home and listen to Dolly Parton songs because it will make Willowdean feel better. Throughout the novel, Dolly Parton inspires Willowdean to be herself. When Willowdean thinks about the song “Dumb Blond,” she thinks that it's a “reminder that no matter who you are, there will always be someone prettier or smarter or thinner. Perfection is nothing more than a phantom shadow we’re all chasing” (212).
Lips
Throughout Dumplin’, characters’ lips are telling, and not just when Willowdean and Bo are kissing (although Willowdean makes note of Bo’s cherry stained lips when she describes him). What people do with their lips throughout the story represents a character’s hesitance or disagreement. Willowdean points out that the word “fat” makes “lips frown” (9).
When Willowdean finds the first sucker that Bo leaves in her locker, she twists her “lips back and forth” (39) as she tries to play it cool. Willowdean’s lips “twitch the whole time” (49) that she thinks back to her first kiss with Bo. When Willowdean goes with Ellen to Sweet 16, and Ellen leaves her for the employee’s only backroom. Will smiles “with her lips” closed (83) because she is unhappy with the scenario. Similarly, the two women at the registration table during pageant registration both “smile with their lips closed” (156) when Will and her misfit friends approach the check-in table.
Willowdean’s mother is irate when Willowdean gets suspended from school. Willowdean describes her mother: “Her lips squeeze together” (134). When Mrs. Dixon learns that Willowdean is registering for the pageant, she “crosses her arms with her lips pursed together” (158).
On a date with Mitch, Willowdean bites “on [her] lips, making them disappear” (235). She is expressing her hesitance to be romantic with Mitch. Similarly, when Bo asks Willowdean to go to church with him, Willowdean bites her lips in apprehension.
When Millie talks about her parents throughout the novel, she also licks and bites her lips. She licks her lips when she tells Willowdean that she forged her mother’s signature on the pageant registration form. When Millie’s mother says goodnight to the girls at Millie’s slumber party, Millie “bites in on her lips so that they disappear” (301).
Clothing
What people wear, and why, is an ongoing theme through Dumplin’. From the first chapter when the girls in Pageant Book Camp are all wearing pink shorts and matching tank tops to when Willowdean wears her red pageant dress, what characters wear is not random or coincidental.
For much of the novel, Willowdean is wearing her Harpy’s uniform. When the uniform is first introduced, Willowdean is clear that she is not required to wear a dress to work but she can’t find pants that fit her well. Callie tells Willowdean that the restaurant uniform is terrible, which adds to Willowdean’s insecurities. The uniform is also important because when Willowdean comes home wearing it and Bekah is at Will’s house having her pageant dress hemmed by Will’s mother, Bekah asks Will about Bo, realizing the two must work together.
In the first chapters of the book, Willow notices what people wear and makes assumption from their clothes, which she later realizes is wrong because most of her assumptions are wrong. She comments that Millie “wears shirts with puppies and kittens and not in an ironic way” (4). Amanda wears ugly therapeutic shoes because her legs are different lengths, so the kids at school call her “Frankenstein.” Because of her disability, Willowdean is surprised to see Amanda in a soccer uniform outside of school. She is even more surprised when Amanda shows off her skill with a soccer ball as her talent for the pageant.
During pageant rehearsal, Ellen and Callie’s matching Sweet 16 outfits remind Willowdean that Ellen is now one with Callie and not Willowdean. Additionally, pageant dresses play an important role in the book. Willowdean thinks she looks good in the red dress her mother bought, but her mother thinks it is too tight (or, more likely, that Willowdean is too big for it). Willowdean ends up wearing it at the pageant, after she has been disqualified, and she feels beautiful. Willowdean’s mother has worn the same pageant dress since she was a teenager, which is important to Mrs. Dixon because it shows the town that she is still thin enough to wear the same dress decades later. At this year’s pageant, Mrs. Dixon doesn’t fit in the dress and needs Willowdean’s help to alter it:
This moment. It is the truest representation of my mom I have ever seen. I guess sometimes the perfection we perceive in others is made up of a whole bunch of tiny imperfections, because some days the damn dress just won’t zip (369).
