1.5 The New Dress
Ice-breakers:
(ii) Discuss the criterion of the choice of your clothes with the help of the following points:
(a) Occasion : It depends upon whether it is a birthday party, marriage ceremony, picnic, tour, festival, gatherings annual function Or official meeting
(b) Society (people you may meet at the venue): Guests, Neighbours, relatives, friends, classmates, Visitors
(c) Availability: Clothing centers, stores, Tailors, Borrowed.
(d) Fashion : Designer clothes, Trendy, casual, Traditional / Western Formal
(e) Your wish/whim: Texture, Colour Pattern, Style.
(f) A suggestion or advice by someone (mother, sister,
friend etc.) : Suggested by every loved person or friends.
(g) Any other than the above mentioned reasons : comfortable, Suitable
(i) Divide the class into groups. Discuss the role of costumes in enhancing your personality.
(Points : clothes very important - first impressions important - colours, cut that suit a person - if the clothes are suitable, confidence level increases - however, it is not the cost of clothes but suitability to the wearer and occasion that are important - your clothes also depend on the culture and place.)
Ans: Clothes are important part of our life. As we say first impression is the last impression this idea may exists just due to clothes, costumes. In order to enhance one's personality, the colour and fitting must suits to particular person.It gives you confidence, Comfortable costumes helps to mingle in the atmosphere. It represents your culture, your attitude, It helps to express worldwide.
(ii) State whether you agree or disagree with the following statements and discuss the reasons.
(a) A simple dress makes one's personality look dull.
Ans: Disagree, sometimes simple dress can also enhance your personality depending upon its fitting and suitability.
Or
If the cut is good, the cloth is good - it suits the wearer - a simple dress can be excellent.
(b) We should not judge ourselves from the comments we receive from others.
Ans: Agree, People are of various tastes and attitudes we cannot live according to them all the time, so dont judge yourself from the comments we receive from others.
Or
we should have self-esteem - trust our judgement - do not have to seek approval from other - people may be envious, etc.
(c) A fashionable and costly dress makes you look rich, intelligent and beautiful.
Ans: Disagree, It is not fashionable or costly dress but any dress that suits you make you look rich ,and beautiful and about intelligence, it is not depends on dress ,it is within.
Or
The dress must suit the nearer should be worn with confidence - bearer should have good posture - accessories should be well matched, etc.(d) We should choose a dress according to the fashion rather than our choice.
Ans: Disagree, we should choose dress according to our choice because sometimes fashion doesn't suits you.
Or
To choose according to fashion may not be comfortable - the fashion may not suit us - we may feel self conscious - hence choose a dress according to our choice.
A1) (i) Narrate in your words the picture imagined by Mabel as she thinks herself in the party as a fly at the edge of the saucer.
Ans: In order to reduce the pains of being old fashioned Mabel imagined herself as fly over the edge of saucer. She would become motionless and standstill. She saw the flies crowling slowly out of a saucer of milk with their wings stuck together. She think herself and other people as flies, they were trying to hoist themselves out of something or into something. She described it as meagre, insignificant and toiling flies.
She considered herself that she was a fly, along with this she describes others as dragonflies, butterflies, beautiful insects,dancing, fluttering, skimming. In this situation she felt that she alone had dragged herself up out of the saucer.
She felt herself like unfashionable, dull apeearance, elderly and infirm, gloomy and drab old fly.
Or
According to Mabel, they are all flies in a saucer, ring desperately to escape. But while everyone around her appears to be a butterfly or dragonfly, Mabel alone remains trapped. Lamenting her banal life and the superficiality of the conversations which "bored her unutterably," Mabel lingers in the saucer, amidst her own hypocrisy, unable to change her condition.(ii) There are a few other characters mentioned in the story. Discuss the way their reactions help us to understand the inferiority complex of Mabel.
Ans: Mrs. Barnet:- while handing her mirror and touching the brushes and thus drawing ber attention perhaps rather markedly to all the appliances for tidying and improving hair, complexion clothes which existed on the dressing table confirmed the suspicion. । Mrs. Barnet is a maidservant in the Dalloway household. Her behaviour in greeting Mabel Waring and taking her coat seem unremarkable to the reader, but sets off great waves of insecurity in the party guest about her appearance and social role.
Rose Shaw:- "But my dear it's perfectly charming! Rose shaw said looking her up and down with that little satirical pucker of the lips which she expected. । Rose Shaw is a guest at Clarissa Dalloway's party. Mabel Waring characterizes her as being dressed in the height of fashion, precisely like everybody else, always.” Rose compliments Mabel on her new dress. But Mabel is convinced that she is being subtly mocked.
Charles's :- "Mabel has 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.
OR
Mrs. Barnet touched the brushes and drew Mabel's attention, rather markedly, to the appliances kept on the dressing table for improving one's looks. She indirectly indicated to Mabel that something about Mabel's looks was not quite right. Mabel immediately lost whatever confidence she had. This shows us that Mabel's inferiority complex was so deep and strong that even a housekeeper's hint rattled her and made her lose confidence.(A2) (i) Pick out the sentences from the story which describe the ambience of the party at Mrs. Dalloway’s place.
Ans: As the title suggests, Mabel's new dress functions as an important symbol throughout the narrative. Its old-fashioned cut and material stand as ever-present reminders to the party guests and, more importantly, to Mabel that she does not belong. This enormously self-absorbed woman sees her dress each time that she passes a mirror, and Mabel mentions it to everyone she meets. Paradoxically, the dress, which “marks" Mabel as inferior, is what she uses to begin conversations: “It's so old-fashioned,' she says to Charles Burt, making him stop on his way to talk to someone else." She gets his attention, if not the response she wanted, when he exclaims, “Mabel's got a new dress!"
The fly is another important symbol in the story. Mabel repeatedly refers to herself as a fly in a saucer. She cannot escape from it, as the milk has covered her wings. The other guests are butterflies
And dragonflies, able to dance and fly; she alone remains in the saucer. The flu thus signifies Mabel estrangement and isolation from her contemporaries.
Or
Ans:
Mabel Waring arrives at Clarissa Dalloway's party and is instantly consumed by feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. These negative feelings are set off by concerns that her new dress in not appropriate for the occasion.
Sentences like:
1. "It was not right."
2. over "what a fright she looks! What a hideous new dress!"
3. "Which deserved to be chastised."
4. "Horror ... idiotically old-fashioned.”
5. When the stylishly dressed Rose Shaw tells her the dress is “perfectly charming,” Mabel is sure sh being mocked.
(iii) Critically analyze Mabel’s weak economic conditions in the past as one of the reasons that led her to choose the old-fashioned dress.
Ans:
She instead blames her parents and their poverty for her inadequateness at the party: “But it was not her fault altogether, after all It was being one of a family of ten; never having money enough, always skimping and paring.…. and one sordid little domestic tragedy after another." Has her family had greater financial resources, Mabel might have married better, and her life might have turned out differently. She might have had a fashionable dress, and she might have been a Rose Shaw.
(iv) The cause of Miss Mabel’s disappointment is not only her poor background in the past but her too much bookishness also. Substantiate.
Ans:
Mabel thinks about her unremarkable family and upbringing, her dreams of romance in far-away lands, and the reality of her marriage to a man with “a safe, permanent underling's job.” She thinks about isolated moments in her life-characterized as “delicious” and “divine"–when she feels happy and fulfilled, connected with all of the earth and everything in it, “on the crest of a wave." She wonders if those moments will come to her less and less often, and determines to pursue personal transformation through “some wonderful, helpful, astonishing book” or an inspirational public speaker.
(v) Do you appreciate Mabel’s tendency of deciding her own value from the comments given by others? Explain your views.
Ans:
No, I don't appreciate Mabel's tendency of her own value from the comments given by others. Because we should not judge ourselves from the comments we receive from others.
(A3) (i) Write the synonyms for the word ‘dress’ by filling appropriate letters in the blanks. One is done for you.
(a) a t t i r e (b) a r r a y
(c) C o s t u m e (d) T u r n o u t
(e) O u t f i t (f) A p p a r e l
(ii) Conchology means the scientific study or collection of mollusc shells. Refer to the dictionary and find out the meanings of -
• Etymology : the study of origin and history of words, or a study of this type relating to one particular word.
• Archaeology : the study of ancient cultures through examination of their buildings, tools, and other objects.
(A4) (i) Use the correct tense form of the verbs given in the brackets and rewrite the sentences.
(a) She (take/takes/took/had taken) that old fashion book of
her mother a few months back.
(b) She (pecking/ pecks/ pecked) at her left shoulder for quite
some time.
(c) One human should (done /doing/be doing) this for another
always.
(d) All this (will be/ is / have been) destroyed in a few years.
(e) She (feels/felt/will be feeling) like a dressmaker’s dummy
standing there.
(ii) Do as directed.
(a) Lata will sing tonight. (Make it less certain.)
Ans: Lata might sing tonight.
(b) You should wear your uniform. (Show ability.)
Ans: You can wear your uniform.
(c) Sandeep may study to clear the examination.
(Make it obligatory/ compulsory.)
Ans: Sandeep must study to clear the examination.
(d) I can do it. (Make a sentence seeking permission.)
Ans: May do it ?
(iii) (a) Frame three rules for the students of your college.
Ans:
1) Student must follow the rules and regulations of the college.
2) Student will not be allowed to enter the college without identity card.
3) Student should attend the lectures.
(b) Frame three sentences giving advice to your younger brother.
Ans:
1) You should take care of your health.
2) You should study hard to achieve success in the exam.
3) You should not waste your time by playing games on mobile phone.
(iv) Fill in the blanks with appropriate modal auxiliaries according to the situation given in the following sentences.
(a) Take an umbrella. It rain might later.
(b) People should walk on the grass.
(c) May I ask you a question?
(d) The signal has turned red. You must wait.
(e) I am going to the library. I will find my friend there.
(A5) (i) Read the sentence ‘we are all like flies….’. The paragraph describes the dejected thoughts that Miss Mabel carries in her mind. All the earlier paragraphs are in a continuity of a story line. The next paragraph begins
with, ‘I feel like….’ again resumes to a story. The author has moved in the mind of the character and out of it very smoothly without any intimation or change in the language or tense. Similarly, she has moved in the past years of Miss Mabel’s life. This is called ‘stream of consciousness’ technique.
Ans: Woolf s short story “The New Dress” is related through a stream-of-consciousness narrative in which the thoughts and feelings of Mabel Waring are central to the narrative. The focus is more on character than plot actually, the plot is revealed as the reader learns about the protagonist. The story emerges from Mabel's thoughts as she perfunctory addresses the other guests and her unconscious associations are evoked by a look or gesture. There is no logical progression of ideas in the story, they occur randomly, as Mabel's thoughts drift to and from the party.
(ii) Read the sentence from the text - What a hideous new dress!
This is an exclamation. It can be written as a simple sentence
'The new dress is very hideous'.
Find out few more exclamatory sentences from the story and transform them into assertive sentences.
Ans: "What a fright she looks! - She looks so frightening.
(iii) Virginia Woolf has created many characters other than Miss Mabel with great skill. Write a character sketch of any one of them.
Ans: Mrs. Barnet:-
Mrs. Barnet isa maidservant in the Dalloway household. Her behavior ingesting Mabel Waring and taking her coat seem unremarkable to the reader, but sets of great waves of insecurity in the party guest about her appearance and social role.
(iv) 'Clothes mean nothing until someone lives in them.' Expand the idea in your own words.
Ans:
Fashion such a dynamically brilliant word which encloses on so much more than just clothes. The reach of this word expands from the head to the toe to everything one could think of. The statement head wears Forever 21 to Gucci Sandals everything is regarded as fashion. The stress to be always with the latest trend is so overwhelming that the people instead of embracing their individuality merge with the crowd, acquiring the level of mediocrity at its best. I stand strong with the Marc Jacobs quote of “clothes mean nothing until someone lives in them”. Regardless of the scenario or the conditions, the message behind it is so on point. Let me highlight my verdicts or extraction from this simple but powerful line.
It Calls For Individuality
The term trends and fashion are divergent contrary to popular perception of them being the same. We are in digitally centric world which call for innovativeness, uniqueness, and exotic touch. The touch different from the mundane style practices can only be exhibited when one instead of captivating other focuses on his own style and look. Buying everything thrown your way will lead you nowhere but on the roads. Smart styling and attitude are what can drastically change your and other perception about you.
(A6) Go to library and read the following books:
(a) 'A Haunted House' by Virginia Woolf
(b) 'Mrs. Dalloway' by Virginia Woolf
(A7) Find out information about career opportunities in the following fields:
(a) Fashion designing
(b) Dress designing
(c) Textile industry
(d) Garment industry
(e) Image consultancy
(f) Psychology and Psychiatry
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