The New Dress by Virginia Woolf

books at bedtime by calming anxiety, the new dress by Virginia Woolf. Mabel had her first serious suspicion that something was wrong as she took her cloak off and Mrs. Barnett while handing her the mirror and touching the brushes, unless drawing her attention perhaps rather markedly to all the appliances for tidying and improving hair, complexion, clothes which existed on the dressing table, confirmed the suspicion that it was not right, not quite right, which growing stronger as she went upstairs and springing at her with conviction as she greeted Clarissa Dalloway. She went straight to the far end of the room to a shaded corner where the looking glass hung and looked. No, it was not right.

And at once the misery which she had always tried to hide, the profound dissatisfaction, the sense she had had ever since she was a child of being inferior to other people, set upon her relentlessly, remorselously, with an intensity which she could not beat off, as she would when she woke at night at home by reading "Borrow" or "Skodd" for "Oh, these men, oh, these women, all worth thinking, what's Mabel wearing? What a fright she looks, what a hideous new dress, their eyelids flickering as they came up and then their lid shutting rather tight." It was her own appalling inadequacy, her cowardice, her mean water sprinkled blood that she depressed her. And at once the whole of the room were, but ever so many hours, she had planned with a little dressmaker how it was to go, seemed sorted, repulsing, and her own drawing room so shabby and herself going out puffed up with vanity as she touched the letters on the hall table and said, "How dull to show off, all this now seemed unattling, silly, poetry and provincial."

All this had been absolutely destroyed, shown up, exploded the moment she came into Mrs. Dalloway's drawing room. What she had thought that evening when, sitting over the tea cups, Mrs. Dalloway's invitation came, was that, of course, she could not be fashionable. It was observed to pretend it even, fashion meant cut, meant style, meant 30 Guinness at least, but why not be original?

Why not be herself anyhow? And getting up, she had taken that old-fashioned book of her mother's, a Paris fashion book of the time of the empire, and had thought how much prettier, more dignified and more womanly they were then. And so set herself up, it was foolish, trying to be like them, plumbing herself in fact, upon being modest and old-fashioned and very charming, giving herself up, no doubt about it, to an orgy of self-love, which deserved to be chastised and so vicked herself out like this.

But she dared not look in the glass. She could not face the whole horror, the pale yellow, idiotically old-fashioned silk dress, with its long skirt and its high sleeves, and its waist, and all the things that look so charming in the fashion book, but not on her, not among all these ordinary people. She felt like a dressmaker's dummy standing there for young people to stick pins into. But my dear, it's perfectly charming, Rose Shaw said, looking her up and down without little satirical packer of the lips which she expected.

Rose herself being dressed in the height of fashion, precisely like everyone else, all way. We are all like flies, trying to call over the edge of the saucer, Mabel thought, and repeated the phrase as if she were crossing herself, as if she were trying to find some spell, to an all this pain, to make this agony enjoyable. Tags of Shakespeare, lines from book she had read ages ago, they suddenly came to her when she was in agony, and she repeated them over and over again. Flies trying to crawl, she repeated.

If she could say that ever often enough and make herself see the flies, she would become numb, chill, frozen, dumb. Now she could see flies crawling slowly out of the saucer of milk with their wings stuck together, and she strained and strained, standing in front of the looking glass, listening to Rose Shaw, to make herself see Rose Shaw and all the other people there is flies, trying to hoist themselves out of something, or into something, meager, insignificant, toiling fly. But she could not see them like that, not other people, she saw herself like that, she was a fly, but the others would drag in flies, butterflies, beautiful insects, dancing, fluttering, swimming, while she alone tracked herself up out of the saucer, envy and spite, the most detestable of vices, they were her chief bolt. I feel like some doubting, to crepid horrible dingy old fly, she said, making Robert Hayden stop just to hear her say that, just to reassure herself by thirbishing up a poor wink-need phrase and so showing how detached she was, how witty, that she did not feel in the least out of anything, and of course, Robert Hayden answered something quite polite, quite insincere, but she saw through instantly and said to herself directly he went again from some book, "Lies, lies, lies, for a party makes things either much more real or much less real," she thought.

She saw in a flash to the bottom of Robert Hayden's heart, she saw through everything, she saw the truth, this was true, this drawing room, this self, and the other faults, Miss Melanne's little work room was really terribly hot, stuppied, sorted, it smelt of clothes and cabbage cooking, and yet, when Miss Melanne put the glass in her hand and she looked at herself with the dress on, finished, an extraordinary bliss, shot through her heart, refused with light, she sprang into existence, red of cares and wrinkles, what she had dreamed of herself was there, a beautiful woman, just for a second, she had not dared look longer, Miss Melanne wanted to know about her length of the skirt, they looked at her, framed, in a scrawl-uping mahogany, a gray white mysteriously smiling charming girl, the core of herself, the soul of herself, and it was not vanity only, not only self-love that made her think it good, tender and true. Miss Melanne said that the skirt could not well be longer, if anything the skirt said Miss Melanne, puckering her forehead, considering with all her wits about her, must be shorter, and she felt suddenly, honestly, full of love for Miss Melanne, much much fondre of Miss Melanne than of any other, anyone in the whole world, could have cried for pity, that she should be crawling on the floor with her mouth full of pins, and her face red and her eyes bulging, that one human being should be doing this for another, and she saw them all as human beings merely, and herself going off to her party, and Miss Melanne pulling the cover over the canaries cage, all letting him pick her hemp seed from between her lips, and the thought of it, on this side of human nature, and its patience and its endurance, and its being content with such miserable, scanty, sooted little pleasures, filled her eyes with tears, and now the whole thing had vanished, the dress, the room, the love, the pity, the scrawloping looking glass, and the canaries cage, all had vanished, and here she was, in a corner of Miss Dalloway's drawing room, suffering torches, woken wide awake to reality, but it was also potry, weak blooded and petty-minded to care so much at her age, with two children, to be still, so utterly dependent on people's opinions, and not have principles of convictions, to be able to say as other people did, there's Shakespeare, there's death, where all weevils in a captain's biscuit, or what ev'ryt was that people did say, she faced herself straight in the glass, she pecked at her left shoulder, she issued out into the room, as if spears were thrown at her yellow dress from all sides, but instead of looking fierce or tragic, as Rose Shaw would have done, Rose would have looked like Bodicea, she looked foolish and self-conscious, and simpored like a schoolgirl and slouched across the room, positively thinking, as if she were a beaten mongrel, and looked at a picture, and engraving, as if one went to a party to look at a picture, everybody knew why she did it, it was from shame, from humiliation, now the flies in the saucer, she said to herself, right in the middle, and cannot get out, and the milk she thought rigidly staring at the picture is sticking its wings together, it's so old fashioned she said to Charles Bird, making him stop, which by itself he hated, and on his way to talk to someone else, she meant, was she tried to make herself think that she meant, that it was the picture and not a dress that was old fashioned, and one word of praise, one word of affection from Charles would have made all the difference to her at the moment, if she had only said, "Mabel, you're looking charming tonight, it would have changed her life, but then she ought to have been more truthful and direct." Charles said nothing of the kind, of course, he was malice itself, he always saw through one, especially if one were feeling particularly mean, poultry or feeble-minded. "Mabel's got a new dress," he said, and the poor fly was absolutely shoved into the middle of the saucer, really, he would like her to drown, she believed, she had no heart, no fundamental kindness, only a veneer of friendliness.

This Milan was much more real, much kinder, if only one could feel that and stick to it always, why she asked herself, replying to Charles much too partly, letting him see that she was out of temper, ruffled as he called it, ruffled, muffled, he said and went on to laugh at her with some women over there, why she asked herself, "can't I feel one thing or always, feel quite sure that Miss Milan is right, and Charles wrong and stick to it, feel sure about the canary and the pity and love and not be whipped all around in a second, by coming into a room full of people." It was her odious, weak, facilitating character again, always giving at the critical moment and not being seriously interested in concolegy, etymology, botany, archaeology, cutting up potatoes and watching them fructify like Mary Dennis, like Violet Sirl. Then Mrs. Holman, seeing her standing there, all down upon her. Of course, a thing like a dress was beneath Mrs. Holman's notice, with her family always tumbling downstairs, or having the scarlet fever.

Could Mabel tell if Elm thought was ever left for August and September, or it was a conversation that brought her utterly, it made her furious to be treated like a house-angent or a messenger boy, to be made use of. Not to have value, that was it, she thought, trying to grasp something hard, something real, while she tried to answer sensibly about the bathroom and the south aspect and the hot water to the top of the house. And all the time, she could see little bits of her yellow dress in the round-looking glass, which made them all the size of boot buttons or tadpoles. And it was amazing to think how much humiliation and agony and self-loathing and effort, and passionate ups and downs of feelings were contained in a thing, the size of a threatening pit.

And what was that still order? That thing, this Mabel wearing, was separate, quite disconnected. And though Mrs. Holman, the black button, was leaning forward and telling her how her eldest boy had strained his heart running, she could see her too, quite detached in the looking glass. And it was impossible that the black dot, leaning forward, gesticulating, should make the yellow dot, sitting solitary, self-centered, feel what the black dot was feeling, yet they pretended.

So impossible to keep boys quiet, that was the kind of thing once said. And Mrs. Holman, who could never get enough sympathy and snatched what little there was greedily, as if it were her right, but she deserved much more, for there was her little girl who had come down this morning with a swollen knee joint. Took this miserable offering and looked at it suspiciously, grudgingly, as it were half penny, when it ought to have been a pound and put it away in her purse, must put up with it, mean a miserable though it was, times being hard, so very hard and she went creaking, injured, Mrs. Holman, about the girl with a swollen joint. Mrs. Tragic, this greed, this clamor of human beings, like a row of caulorants, barking and flapping their wings for sympathy.

It was Tragic, could one have felt it and not merely pretended to feel it, but in her yellow dress, tonight, she could not ring out one drop more. She wanted it all, all for herself. She knew, she kept on looking into the glass, dipping into that dreadfully showing up blue palm, that she was condemned, despised, left like this in a back quarter, because of her being like this, a feeble, facilitating creature, and it seemed to her that the yellow dress was a penance which she had deserved. And if she had been dressed like rose short, in a lovely, clinging green with a ruffle of swans down, she would have deserved her, and she thought that there was no escape for her, none whatsoever.

But it was not her fold altogether, after all. It was being one of her family of ten, never having money enough, always skimping and preparing, and her mother carrying great cans, and the linoonian worn on the stair's edges, and one sorted, little domestic tragedy after a number. Nothing catastrophic, the sheep farm failing, but not utterly, an eldest brother marrying beneath them, but not by very much. There was no Roman, nothing extreme about them at all.

They peated out, respectively, in seed-side resorts, every watering place had one of their hands, even now, sleeping some lodging, with the front windows not quite facing the sea. That was so like them, they had to squint at things, always. And she had done the same, she was just like her aunt, for all her dreams of living in India, married to some hero like Sir Henry Lawrence, some empire builder, still the right of a native in a turban filled her with Roman. She had failed utterly, she had married Hubert, with his safe, permanent underlings, job in the law courts, and they managed tolerably in a small-ish house, without proper maids, and hashed when she was alone, or just bread and butter, but now and then, Mrs. Holman was off, thinking her, the most dried-up, unsympathetic twig she had ever met, absurdly dreaded too.

And we tell everyone about Mabel's fantastic appearance, now and then, thought Mabel wearing, after loan on the blue sofa, punching the cushion in order to look occupied. For she would not join Charles Bird, or Rose Shaw, chattering like magpies, and perhaps laughing at her by the fireplace, now and then. There did come to her delicious moments, reading the other night in bed, for instance, or down by the sea, on the sand in the sun at Easter. Better recall it, a great tough, the pale sangras standing, all twisted like a shock of spears against the sky, which was blue, like a smooth, china-reg, so fern, so hard.

And then the melody of the waves, hush, hush, they said, and the children's shouts paddling, yes, it was a divine moment, and there she lay, she felt. In the hand of the goddess, who was the world, rather a hard-hearted, but very beautiful goddess, a little lamb laid on the altar? One did not think these things were silly, and it didn't matter so as long as no one ever said them. And also, with Hubert, sometimes she had quite unexpectedly carving the mutton for Sunday lunch, for no reason opening a letter coming into a room, divine moments, when she had said to herself, because she would never say this to anyone else.

This is it, this has happened, this is it, and the other way about it was equally surprising, it is, when everything was arranged, music, weather, holidays, every reason for happiness was there, then nothing happened at all. One wasn't happy, it was flat, just flat, that was all. Her wretched self again, no doubt. She had always been a fretful, weak, unsatisfactory mother, a wobbly wife, lollying about in a kind of twilight existence, with nothing very clear or very bold, or more one thing than another, like all her brothers and sisters, except perhaps Herbert, they were all the same poor water-vained creatures who did nothing.

Then in the midst of this creeping, crawling life, suddenly she was on the crest of a wave, that wretched fly, where she read the story that kept coming into her mind about a fly in the saucer, that struggled to get out. Yes, she had these moments, but now that she was faulty, they might come more and more seldom by degrees she would cease to struggle anymore. That was deplorable, that was not to be endured, that made her feel ashamed herself. She would go to the London Library tomorrow, she would find some wonderful, helpful, astonishing book quite by charm, a book by a clergyman, by an American no one had ever heard of, but she would walk down the strand and drop, accidentally, into a hall where a minor was telling about the life in the pit, and suddenly she would become a new person.

She would be absolutely transformed. She would wear a uniform, she would be called sister, somebody, she would never give a thought to close again, and forever after, she would be perfectly clear about Charles Bird and Miss Melan, and this room in that room, and it would be always day after day, as if she were lying in the sun or carving the matten, it would be it. She got up from the blue sofa, and the yellow button in the looking glass got up too, and she waved her hand to Charles and Rose to show them that she did not depend on the one scrap, and the yellow button moved out to the looking glass, and all the spears were gathered into her breast, as she walked towards Mrs. Twallaway and said, "Goodnight." But it's too early to go, said Mrs. Twallaway, who was always so charming.

"I'm afraid I must," said Mavel Wearing, "but she added in her weak wobbly voice, which only sounded ridiculous when she tried to strengthen it. I have enjoyed myself enormously." "I have enjoyed myself," she said to Mrs. Twallaway, whom she met on the stairs. "Lies, lies, lies," she said to herself, going downstairs.

And right in the saucer, she said to herself, as she flanked Mrs. Bennett for helping her, and wrapped herself, round and round and round, in the Chinese cloak. She had worn these 20 years.