New Dress By Virginia Wolff
... The people there are nice to her, but, being very low in self-confidence, she sees their reactions to her and her new dress as facetious. ... What a hideous new dress! ... The passage is about Mabel daydreaming about being in a different room where nobody is judging her or her dress, the dress being not entirely appropriate for the occasion. ... She was wearing a dress that was entirely appropriate and where no one was judging her, “she looked at herself with the dress on, finished, an extraordinary bliss shot through her heart. ... There is certain irony about her surname that she is so concerned about the dress she has got on and her surname is Waring. The setting of the story is a dinner party of middle-upper class people who dress rather smartly at their parties.