The New Dress

Virginia Woolf’s work often focuses on the complicated roles of women in modern society. Woolf suggests that many traditional views about women’s roles persisted even through the radical social changes of the early 20th century. Many Modernist writers were interested in challenging traditional expectations around gender and class. They looked at institutions that no longer served human (particularly female) interests and sought to reconfigure and challenge them. Many of Woolf’s works focused on the prejudice that women should be defined by their appearance and their relationships with men. Woolf’s development of Mabel as a protagonist who can’t enjoy one minute of a party because she is preoccupied with her dress reveals the plight, however quiet, of many women in Woolf’s time.

Modernist writers like Woolf sought to explore women as subjects rather than objects. Clothing is a central subject because it exemplifies women as objects—passive figures to be looked at and judged by their beauty rather than by their power to do things in the public sphere. A dress, then, becomes a symbol of how objectification can be oppressive. Mabel’s focus on whether her dress is acceptable is so overpowering that it paralyzes her. She is unable to take decisive action or even have a genuine conversation with any of the guests.