The New Dress

Imagery is the use of visually descriptive language, and Woolf’s “The New Dress” features abundant imagery that builds a tone of disgust and despair. While Mabel’s comparison of herself to a fly is a useful simile, she doesn’t stop there. The imagery that develops the simile offers a picture. There is a saucer, and the flies are trying to crawl out of it, even when they become “numb, chill, frozen, dumb” (Paragraph 5). They try to crawl with “their wings stuck together” (Paragraph 5). The partygoers are beautiful insects, and the image goes further, as they’re “dancing, fluttering, skimming” in contrast to Mabel, who is dragging “herself up out of the saucer” (Paragraph 5). The image creates a visual description that appeals to the reader’s senses. The specific language that gives the reader a picture to imagine is a powerful tool characteristic of Woolf’s writing.

An epiphany as a literary device is a moment in a narrative when a character experiences a light in the darkness, an “a-ha” moment, a revelation that changes their pattern of thought. The anti-epiphany is a literary device in which a character’s epiphany immediately dissolves and the character returns to old patterns. The anti-epiphany was common in Modernism. In “The New Dress,” Mabel’s racing, insecure thoughts and fixations about her dress are briefly interrupted at the apex of the story arc. She stops her whirring mind long enough to envision a future in which her worth is not dependent on whether or not others like her dress. She imagines getting a book, gaining knowledge, and developing an identity outside of her appearance. It seems like an epiphany. In the next moments of the narrative, however, Mabel lies to the hostess under the pressure of social conventions. She then compares herself to the fly again as she notes the age of her cloak. This return to the original tone of despair undercuts the revelatory moment and reclassifies it as an anti-epiphany.