Mabel Waring arrives at a fashionable party in a dress she had made specially for the occasion — and within moments is convinced that everyone in the room can see exactly how wrong it is, and exactly how wrong she is. Virginia Woolf turns one ordinary social evening into a merciless, exact portrait of self-consciousness and social anxiety, following Mabel's spiraling inner monologue with an accuracy that feels startlingly modern a century on. A short, sharp companion piece to Mrs Dalloway, set at the very same kind of party.
