The New Dress | Summary

In Woolf’s 1924 short story ‘‘The New Dress,’’ Mabel Waring arrives at Clarissa Dalloway’s party and is instantly consumed by feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. These negative feelings are set off by concerns that her new dress in not appropriate for the occasion. 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...

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