Unit 1.5 The New Dress Extract 02

Extract No. 02

Page No. 45 

[Lines, “What she had thought…..chief faults”]

Courtesy: SCERT Updated Question Bank 

Read  the extract and do all the activities that follow.

  

What she had thought that evening when, sitting over teacups, Mrs. Dalloway’s invitation came, was that, of course, she could not be fashionable. It was absurd to pretend it even - fashion meant cut, meant style, meant thirty guineas at least - but why not be original? Why not be herself, anyhow? And, getting up, she had taken that old fashion book of her mother’s, a Paris fashion book of the time of the Empire, and had thought how much prettier, more dignified, and more womanly they were then, and so set herself - oh, it was foolish - trying to like them, pluming herself in fact, upon being modest and old-fashioned, and very charming, giving herself up, no doubt about it, to an orgy of self-love, which deserved to be chastised, and so rigged herself out like this. But she dared not look in the glass. She could not face the whole horror - the pale yellow, idiotically old- fashioned silk dress with its long skirt and its high sleeves and its waist and all the things that looked so charming in the fashion book, but not on her, not among all these ordinary people. She felt like a dressmaker’s dummy standing there, for young people to stick pins into. “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 herself being dressed in the height of the fashion, precisely like everybody else, always. We are all like flies trying to crawl over the edge of the saucer, Mabel thought, and repeated the phrase as if she were crossing herself, as if she were trying to find some spell to annul this pain, to make this agony endurable. Tags of Shakespeare, lines from books she had read ages ago, suddenly came to her when she was in agony, and she repeated them over and over again. “Flies trying to crawl, “she repeated. If she could say that over often enough and make herself see the flies, she would become numb, chill, frozen, and dumb. Now she could see flies crawling slowly out of a saucer of milk with their wings stuck together; and she strained and strained (standing in front of the looking-glass, listening to Rose Shaw) to make herself see Rose Shaw and all the other people there as flies, trying to hoist themselves out of something, or into something,meagre, insignificant, toiling flies. But she could not see them like that, not other people. She saw herself like that - she was a fly, but the others were dragonflies,butterflies, beautiful insects, dancing, fluttering, skimming, while she alone dragged herself up out of the saucer. (Envy and spite, the most detestable of the vices, were her chief faults.)

 

A1. Complete :                 (02)

Complete the sentences by choosing information given in the extract.

a) Mabel referred Paris Fashion Book to prepare herself for the party.

b) Mabel’s dress was Pale, yellow, idiotically old fashioned silk dress with long skirt

c) According to Rose shaw Mabel’s dress was perfectly charming

d) Mabel thought that they all are like flies trying to crawl over the edge of the saucer.

A2.    Find out :                   (02)

According to Mabel, Fashion means………………………

         

Fashion meant cut, meant style, meant thirty guineas at least - She also thinks thar  Why not be herself. She feels that one should not copy or imitate others. Be original be comfortable.

A3.    Give reasons :           (02)

    Mabel was afraid of looking in the mirror / glass because  ………………....

          She could not face the whole horror. Her dress was pale yellow, idiotically old- fashioned silk dress with its long skirt and its high sleeves and its waist and all the things that looked so charming in the fashion book, but not on her, not among all these ordinary people. She felt like a dressmaker’s dummy standing there. She was too negative about herself.

A4.  Personal Response:   (02)

         Share your views or advice that you  would like to give to those who want to be a professional model regarding attire/ clothes  on special occasions.

This is a Practice Activity for students.

A5.    Language study:      (02)

a)       She could not face the whole horror.  (Use “be able to” and rewrite)

          She was not able to face the whole horror or she was unable to face the horror.

b)       She felt like a dressmaker’s dummy standing there. (Frame a Rhetorical question)

          Didn’t she feel like a dressmaker’s dummy standing there?

c)   oh, it was foolish –trying to be like them. (Make it Assertive)

          It was really foolish trying to be like them.

A6. Vocabulary :                  (02)

a)       Illogical = absurd

b)       Criticised = chastised

c)       Exactly = precisely

d)       Bearable = endurable.

Activities prepared and compiled by

TUSHAR J BAGWE

K J SOMAIYA COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND COMMERCE VIDYAVIHAR EAST MUMBAI 77

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tushar@somaiya.edu

tushar8bagwe@gmail.com

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Unit 1.5 The New Dress Extract Number 01

 

Unit 1.5  The New Dress                                   Virginia Woolf

SOURCE: SCERT QUE BANK

Extract No. 01

Page No. 44 

[ Lines, “ Mable……….Drawing room’]

       

Mabel had her first serious suspicion that something was wrong as she took her cloak off and Mrs. Barnet, while handing her the mirror and touching the brushes and thus drawing her attention, perhaps rather markedly, to all the appliances for tidying and improving hair, complexion, clothes, which existed on the dressing table, confirmed the suspicion - that it was not right, not quite right, which growing stronger as she went upstairs and springing anther, with conviction as she greeted Clarissa Dalloway, she went straight to the far end of the room, to a shaded corner where a looking-glass hung and looked. No! It was not RIGHT. And at once the misery which she always tried to hide, the profound dissatisfaction - the sense she had had, ever since she was a child, of being inferior to other people - set upon her, relentlessly, remorselessly, with an intensity which she could not beat off, as she would when she woke at night at home, by reading Borrow or Scott; for oh these men, oh these women, all were thinking-”What’s Mabel wearing? What a fright she looks! What hideous new dress!”- Their eyelids flickering as they came up and then their lids shutting rather tight. It was her own appalling inadequacy; her cowardice; her mean, water-sprinkled blood that depressed her. And at once the whole of the room where, for ever so many hours, she had planned with the little dressmaker how it was to go, seemed sordid, repulsive; and her own drawing-room so shabby, and herself, going out, puffed up with vanity as she touched the letters on the hall table and said: “How dull!” to show off - all this now seemed unutterably, paltry, and provincial. All this had been absolutely destroyed, shown up, exploded, the moment she came into Mrs. Dalloway’s drawing-room.

Read the above Extract and complete the activities given below:

A1. True or false :               (02)

a) Mabel was not happy with her dress. (T)

b) Mabel had an inferiority complex from her childhood. (T)

c) Mabel decided to wear new dress for Mrs Dalloway’s party (T)

d) Mabel was too much negative about her dress and approach in general. (T)

A2.    Proofs / evidences:        (02) 

Find out proofs or evidences that shows that Mabel is thinking too much of her dress.

Mabel thought that it was not right, not quite right, which growing stronger as she went upstairs and springing anther, with conviction as she greeted Clarissa Dalloway, she went straight to the far end of the room, to a shaded corner where a looking-glass hung and looked. No! It was not RIGHT. And at once the misery which she always tried to hide, the profound dissatisfaction - the sense she had had, ever since she was a child, of being inferior to other people - set upon her, relentlessly, remorselessly, with an intensity which she could not beat off.

A2. Infer and Interpret the statement,"It was not RIGHT"  With reference to the above Extract.        (02)

(This is a practice Activity for students since it is given in the Textbook.)

A3.    Describe :                        (02)

          Write down the reactions/thoughts  of Mabel (stream of consciousness technique) about her own dress, when she appeared in The party.

          “What’s Mabel wearing? What a fright she looks! What hideous new dress!”- Their eyelids flickering as they came up and then their lids shutting rather tight. It was her own appalling inadequacy; her cowardice; her mean, water-sprinkled blood that depressed her. And at once the whole of the room where, for ever so many hours, she had planned with the little dressmaker how it was to go, seemed sordid, repulsive; and her own drawing-room so shabby.

A4.    Personal Response :     (02)

          Share  your reaction, if you realise that the dress you have chosen for a special occasion was not properly stitched and you are not comfortable in it.( Write in about Fifty Words)

This is a Practice Activity for students 

A5.    Language study :           (02)

a)       She could not beat off.  (Use “be able to” and rewrite)

          She was not able to beat off or she was unable to beat off.

b)       “How dull!” (Make it Assertive)

          It was dull or it was really dull.

c)       What a hideous new dress! (Make it Assertive)

          The new dress is hideous or The new dress is really hideous.

A6. Vocabulary :                     (02)

          Find out words from the extract which mean the following.

a)       A strong belief = conviction

b)       Cruelly = remorselessly

c)       Very ugly = hideous

d)       Lack of courage = cowardice.

Activities Compiled by

TUSHAR J BAGWE

K.J. SOMAIYA  COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND COMMERCE VIDYAVIHAR EAST MUMBAI 77