little children, both girls participate in their mother’s dreams, one wearing the clothes her mother makes, the other experimenting with things that would make her a prodigy. Ultimately, both girls express feelings of wanting to have their own lives. In “Two Kinds,” theprotagonist stops playing piano after a disastrous performance and goes on to live an ordinary life in which she does not excel at anything but she is happy. In “Red Dress,” the young woman, who has a chance to be non-conformist when Mary Fortune asks her to leave the dance, ends up staying. She dances, and walks home with a boy only to see her mother sitting up waiting for her, wanting to hear all about the dance. She sees her mother in a different light, something that does not happen in “Two Kinds” until after the mother’s death. At the end of “Red Dress,” the protagonist explains that she may fail at always being happy but her mother will never know. In “Two Kinds,” the young woman plays a two part piano piece that she half-heartedly practiced as a child, entitled “Pleading Child” and “Perfectly Contented,” realizing that the two pieces are symbolically intertwined in her life. Parental expectations had a strong influence in each story.