The New Dress

The New Dress

About the Author:

Virginia Woolf  

• An English novelist , critic, essayist, short story writer, diarist, autobiographer and biographer
•   Was born in London on 25 January 1882, the 3^rd of four children of Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia. 
  

  •     Virginia did not receive a formal education, but access to their father’s extensive library provided a rich source for their private learning
  •   Her life was not easy because her mother died early, her brothers and sisters as well
    •  In 1912, she married Leonard Woolf, a writer and socialist political figure
    •      A member of Bloomsbury Group
      
         Included of the circle of friends are: 
      

      • John Maynard Keynes 

      • Clive Bell  

      • Lytton Strachey  
      
      Her famous works include the novels:
      • To the Lighthouse
      • Mrs. Dalloway 
      • A Haunted house
      • An Unwritten Novel
      
      
       Virginia had a subsequent mental breakdown since she was a child, despite her successes, Woolf feared the onslaught of another breakdown, from which she believed, it would be impossible to recover and in 1941, she took her own life by drowning. 
  •   In her last note to her husband she wrote: 
    • “I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.… 
     
    About the New Dress
    
    Virginia Woolf’s short story “The New Dress” was written in 1924. The story was published in the May 1927; it is about the feelings of a woman towards herself and her reaction to the behaviors of others when they meet her. It is also about the agonies and human experience in fashion. It was said that the author had ambivalent complex relationship with fashion. Meaning she gets a hard time of choosing what fashion that will fit on her. Probably, she wrote this short story to put her feelings when she experience being criticize by others to her fashion.
     
    The New Dress Characters:
    • Mabel Waring
                            - A middle-aged woman with two children
             - Since she was a child, she has the feeling of
                        Inferiority to other people             
                        - She was invited in a social gathering. 
    

    •   Mrs. Barnet
    
    
      - Maidservant in the Dalloway household
    •  Clarissa Dalloway
                            - The hostess of the party that Mabel attends 
    

    • Mrs. Dalloway
                            -invited Mabel to the party
    Other guests in the party: 
    

    • Robert Haydon-  try to cheer up  Mabel but insincere way
    • Rose Shaw – dressed in the height of the fashion 
    •  Charles Burt – guest in the party that can change the life of Mabel
    •  Mrs. Holman –the one share her family      story and not detached to the party
    
    
    
    
    
    The New Dress  
  • Mabel Waring arrives at the Clarissa Dalloway’s party with her feeling of inadequacy and inferiority. She was thinking that her dress is not appropriate to the occasion. Mrs. Barnet took her coat and after she greeted Mrs. Dalloway she went straight in the mirror placed on the corner of the room to looked at herself, filled with misery and conviction, she say to herself “It was not right”, she imagines other guests exclaiming to themselves and thinking “what a fright she looks! What a hideous new dress she was wearing”.
    
    
    She begins to berate herself; she was wearing a yellow silk dress made from outdated pattern. Mabel looking at the mirror remembered the evening she received the invitation of Mrs. Dalloway. After she received it, she had taken the old fashion book of her mother’s -------a Paris fashion book of the time of Empire. She thought that the designed there was prettier, more dignified, and womanly; she chose the design that looked so charming in the fashion book and spent countless hours with her dressmaker Miss Milan attempting to get the dress just perfect for the party where she wishes to have the image of perfection of herself.
    
    
    Back to the reality, what she had thought that evening that she will have the beautiful image of a woman had vanished. She could not even looked at herself wearing the old fashioned silk dress that looked so charming in the fashion book but not on her  or even for the other guests in the party.
    
    
    “But my dear, it’s perfectly charming!” Rose Shaw said, looking her up and down with the satirical pucker lips.
    After Mabel heard those words from Rose Shaw, she began to compare herself in to a fly. She saw herself like a fly while she saw other guests like dragonflies, butterflies, and beautiful insects.
    “I feel like some dowdy, horribly dingy old fly” she said to herself, making Robert Haydon stopped. He tried to cheer up Mabel and make her feel that she belongs to the party but Mabel herself feel that this Robert was insincere on he was saying.
    
    
    Mabel recall again the evening that she was in her dressmaker, Miss Milan told her that the dress was beautiful in her, she felt the love of Miss Milan when she heard those word , but then, wide awake to reality the love she felt for Miss Milan before change into a self torture in the party.
    
    
    She faced herself straight in the mirror and then walks. She was in the middle of the party, she was staring a picture. “It’s so old fashioned” she told to Charles Burt. She tried to make herself think that the picture and not her new dress that was old-fashioned. She was thinking, hoping, and concluding to herself that if Charles Burt would say that she was looking charming tonight that would change her life. But then, Charles said “Mabel got a new dress!” Charles did that to Mabel to feel ashamed. After he uttered that, he went on laughing at the other women over there.
    
    
    Mabel alone asked herself why, why she can’t feel that Miss Milan was right when she told her that she should love coming to a room full of people.
    Then, Mrs. Holman, saw her standing. They sat on a blue sofa and have talk. Mrs. Holman shared her family story to Mabel, however Mabel didn’t grasp anything to what Mrs. Holman was saying, she had only realized that this Mrs. Holman was like her that cannot relate or quite detached to the party.
    
    
    While Mrs. Holman was talking, Mabel’s mind was busy in thinking something. She thinks that she wanted to be like Rose Shaw that was beautifully dressed in the party, but she also told herself that what she is wearing now and what she is in the party is what she really deserved, because she was a part of a family that have 10 members and belongs to a lower class in the society. She is like her brothers and aunts that married a person that brings her to a smallish house.
    Mrs. Holman leaved Mabel in the blue sofa, she was staring at Rose Shaw and Charles Burt chattering and laughing at her. Sitting there, she recalls the happy moments of her and her husband Hubert. Those divine and happy moments of them, she thought that all of that was enough to make them happy but now she realized that it was just flat, their life was just flat.
    She said to herself that she is unworthy and unsatisfactory mother but then in the middle of torturing herself she suddenly realized that she was now 40 and she should stop degrading and comparing herself to a fly.
    
    
    By then, she decided to go to London Library the day after the party to find some books that can help her to transform herself to a new individual and after that she would never give chance to others to thought about her dress again.
    So she got up from the sofa, waved her hand to Charles and Rose Shaw to show that she did not depend on them. She walked towards Mrs. Dalloway and said “Good Night”. Mrs. Dalloway tried to stop Mabel to go home but Mabel said she already enjoyed herself which is a lie.
    
    
    Interpretation
     
  • It is a story that is written in a stream-of-consciousness technique as it describes Mabel thoughts and actions while she is in the party. The stream-of consciousness technique which Virginia Woolf is famous for makes the story more interesting and shows the reader the inside of Mabel. She also uses quite a few images which should be understood by the reader. The new dress and thus women’s consciousness of fashion have to be considered. In the story, the party is the material used to make the main character realize that she must change.
   
  • Approach
    Psychological approach
                    It describes the way of thinking and the personality of the main character. 
    
    
    Literary Device
    
    
    Flashback
                She uses flashbacks to escape the reality but these happy feelings are only temporary.
    
    
    
    References
    •      http://www.enotes.com/new-dress
    •      www.dibache.com/text.asp?cat=51&id=2223
    •      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Virginia Woolf
     
    Closing
    “We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies.”
     ~Roderick Thorp, Rainbow Drive