Author Biography
Introduction
summery
Characters
Style
Themes
 Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia
Stephen in London on January 25, 1882,
the third of four children of Julia
Duckworth and Sir Leslie Stephen, a
noted historian and biographer.
 As a child, Woolf received no formal
education but made use of her father's
library and literary friendships to educate
herself.
 London.
 After her mother's death in 1895, Woolf
experienced a nervous breakdown, the
first in a series of four debilitating
emotional traumas.
 When her father died nine years later,
Woolf had her second mental breakdown.
Upon her recovery, she moved with her
sister, Vanessa, and her brothers, Thoby
and Adrian, to the Bloomsbury district of
 Woolf is considered one of the greatest
innovators in the English language. In her
works she experimented with stream-ofconsciousness and the underlying
psychological as well as emotional
motives of characters. Woolf's reputation
declined sharply after World War II, but
her eminence was re-established with the
surge of Feminist criticism in the 1970s
 Virginia Woolf's short story "The
New Dress" was written in 1924
while she was writing the novel
Mrs. Dalloway, published in 1925.
Critics have entertained the
possibility that the story may
originally have been a chapter of
the novel because some of the
same characters and events
appear in both works.
 It is a story about the feelings of a
woman towards herself and her
reaction to the behaviors of others
when they meet her.
• Mabel is wearing a yellow dress that she
designed with her dressmaker specifically for
this particular occasion.
• she arrives at the party and removes her
cloak
• Immediately after greeting her hostess, she
goes straight to a mirror at the far of the
room to look at herself and is filled with
misery at the conviction that ‘‘It was not
right.’’
• She imagines the other guests exclaiming to
themselves over ‘‘what a fright she looks!
What a hideous new dress!’’ She begins to
berate herself for trying to appear ‘‘original’’:
• During her stay at the party she has several
flashbacks which remind her of the moments
at the dressmaker Miss Milan and of her past
. •
• ’ She thinks of the new dress as a
‘‘horror . . . idiotically old-fashioned.
• At these occasions she always
compares herself to a fly trying to
get over the edge of a saucer
• . At the end of the story she
thinks about changing her life
and leaves the party with this
new feeling.
Characters
Mrs. Barnet is a maidservant in the Dalloway
household. Her behavior in greeting Mabel Waring
and taking her coat seem unremarkable to the
reader, but sets off great waves of insecurity in the
party guest about her appearance and social role.
Clarissa Dalloway is the hostess of the party
that Mabel attends. Clarissa is affable and
courteous to her guests, and her presence lingers,
though the reader only hears her speak once in the
story— to encourage Mabel not to leave the party
early.
• Mabel Waring is a middle-aged woman
who reflects constantly and, some might
say, obsessively, about her alienation
from the members of the elevated level of
society she wants to join. When she is
invited to a party given by the wealthy
and socially prominent Clarissa Dalloway,
she is overwhelmed with worry about her
inability to dress fashionably
Style
• Stream of Consciousness
Woolf's short story "The New Dress" is
related through a stream-ofconsciousness narrative in which the
thoughts and feelings of Mabel Waring
are central to the narrative.
The story follows her thoughts about the
dress, about the party, about who she is
and who she wishes to be. She tells
herself that it is her choice not to be like
the rest of them,
but she also knows that she is envious
of them and her final comment about
her lying about enjoying herself at the
party: ”Lies, lies, lies”, could equally be
applied to everything she says to
herself about being different on
purpose.
 The story emerges from Mabel's
thoughts as she perfunctorily
addresses the other guests and her
unconscious associations are evoked
by a look or gesture.
 There is no logical progression of
ideas in the story; they occur
randomly, as Mabel's thoughts drift to
and from the party
The protagonist Mabel is not a very strong
character and does not have much selfconfidence, that is why she can be easily
influenced by others.
 She uses flashbacks to escape the
reality but these happy feelings are only
temporary. At the end nothing has really
changed for Mabel and she will always
stay the way she is.
•
• The story is told from an
anonymous, third-person
perspective. In a stream-ofconsciousness narrative, the
narrator knows the inner thoughts
of the protagonist
Alienation and Loneliness
Mabel Waring's feelings of
alienation surface when she
attends a party given by Clarissa
Dalloway. The reader first sees her
insecurity when the Dalloways's
servant, Mrs. Barnet, immediately
recognizes Mabel's humble origins
from the new dress that she has
had made for the party.
Although the other guests engage Mabel
in conversation, an acute selfconsciousness about her appearance
and manners makes her unable to
communicate on anything other than a
superficial level.
 Mabel's self-absorption and selfcenteredness isolate her from the other
party guests and make any
communication impossible.
 Wrapped up in her own world, she
never carefully considers what others
say; instead, Mabel assumes that
everything at the party somehow
involves her and make fun of her
Lack self-confidence and
communication
• The protagonist Mabel is not a very
strong character and does not have
much self-confidence, that is why she
can be easily influenced by others.
• She thinks that every one make fun of
her appearance
• The story focuses mainly on Mabel’s
feelings of inadequacy at this party,
which are represented by the dress
she is wearing. Although she thought
the dress to be fashionably oldfashioned, she realizes, once at the
party, how different she (and her
dress) is from the rest of them, who
are “dressed in the height of the
fashion”
Social Class
• When Mabel first sees herself in the mirror in
the privacy of the workroom, she learns that
"what she had dreamed of herself was there—
a beautiful woman." She was "the core of
herself, the soul of herself" (7).
• However, in Mrs. Dalloway’s drawing-room,
"woken wide awake to reality"(8), she
perceives her image as "repulsive" and
reconsiders her course of action to have been
pointless . Her attempt to reinvent a selfimage and her view of the "core of herself" as
"a beautiful woman" are destroyed (9).
• Under the social coercions of the party,
Mabel questions and alters her selfimage. What is true is no more her
original and self-made self at Miss
Milan’s: "This was true," she confirms,
"this drawing-room, this self, the other
false" (10). Mabel’s internalized gender
and class insecurities cause her to
undergo a psychological transformation
in the public space of the party
Clothing as a metaphor for gender
and class restriction
• Mabel hates her chosen dress precisely
because it does what she has previously
wished it to do: to display her unique
identity. She feels that all the guests are
thinking, "What a fright she looks! What a
hideous new dress!"(13), and even
becomes paranoid. When Rose Shaw tells
her the dress is "perfectly charming"
(14), Mabel is certain that she has
derided her.
• Even when others discuss issues
related to their own lives, she imagines
they are exchanging secret messages
about her appearance. In this context,
clothing clearly substitutes social
coercions and the ways in which they
exercise power and control over
Mabel’s personal identity, prompting
her to abandon all agency regarding
her identity.
Mirror as a metaphor for the power of
sexism and classism
• Mirror is a symbolic tool that brings
about Mabel’s endless "reflections" of
insecurity, embarrassment and agony.
It is the symbolic tool of a societal
sexism reflecting dot-sized images of
women. While listening to Mrs. Holmes,
Mabel sees her own reflection in the
mirror as a "yellow dot" and that of
Mrs. Holman as a "black dot" or a
"black button."