The New Dress | Overview of The New Dress
In the following essay, Lyle examines the changing
social and cultural conditions in England following
World War I and their influence on such
Woolf short stories as ‘‘The New Dress.’’
Virginia Woolf had seen the devastating effects of social unrest and war, but she also understood that small events in a single life had enormous consequences. A gesture or nod might radically change a person’s thoughts or course of action. In an essay published in Modern Fiction, therefore, she encouraged writers to ‘‘record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall . . . let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life...
[The entire page is 1450 words long]
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