As Mabel Waring takes off her cloak and steps into the drawing room of Clarissa Dalloway she
immediately realizes that something is not right: her pale-yellow silk dress which she has had
specially made for the occasion is clearly old-fashioned dowdy and out of place. Everyone
seems to be looking at her in dismay or mocking her appearance. Crushed at once by her
insecurity Mabel is pervaded by a sense of self-loathing and feels utter revulsion for the
social world she has tried so hard to impress. Written in 1924 and perhaps intended for
inclusion in Mrs Dalloway a book Woolf was working on at the time ?The New Dress' is here
accompanied by most of the short stories she published in her lifetime and six other
posthumously published narratives that share the milieu and some of the characters of her
celebrated novel. Together they reveal their author as one of the finest practitioners in the
field of short fiction.
