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Question 1
How do the quotes from the text in the Theme #1: Insecurity above help contribute to the theme of insecurity?
Answer:Each of the three quotes provides details about how Mabel feels about herself and how she simply does not measure up to the other people at the party. She sees herself as an annoying, ugly fly and the partygoers as "dragonflies, butterflies, beautiful insects." And that is just her appearance—which makes her feel inadequate and insecure around others. She also describes herself in very negative terms: "cowardice," and a "fretful, weak, unsatisfactory mother." These words imply she is verbally beating herself up with her insecurities and her feelings of not measuring up as a mother, a woman and a person. This ability we have to see into her thoughts and self-doubts reveal to us specific details that develop over the course of the story to let us know she is a damaged person. The doubts appear as soon as she enters the garden party and picks up in intensity as the story progresses.
Go to question 2.
Go to question 2.
Question 2
How do the quotes from the text in the Theme #2 - Alienation and Loneliness above help contribute to the theme of alienation and loneliness?
Answer:At the party Mabel feels like she does not fit in, which makes her feel alienated from the other partygoers. She even perceives conversations that the other guests are having might be about her and her unsuitable dress. She anticipates their thoughts and feelings and is certain they must be about her.
She is physically alone—earlier in the story she is left to look at a picture in the corner of the room; here she is sitting alone on the couch trying to "look occupied," which is both sad and pitiable. When she does engage in a conversation with one of the partygoers, the woman only asks her questions about a property, which makes her feel like a worker of no social value. She feels the partygoers only converse with her on a very superficial level and don't feel the need to get to know her. She even states that she is "separate, quite disconnected" from the others. She has no friends and no one to make her feel like she belongs.
Go to question 3.
She is physically alone—earlier in the story she is left to look at a picture in the corner of the room; here she is sitting alone on the couch trying to "look occupied," which is both sad and pitiable. When she does engage in a conversation with one of the partygoers, the woman only asks her questions about a property, which makes her feel like a worker of no social value. She feels the partygoers only converse with her on a very superficial level and don't feel the need to get to know her. She even states that she is "separate, quite disconnected" from the others. She has no friends and no one to make her feel like she belongs.
Go to question 3.
Question 3
How do the quotes from the text in the Theme #3 - Social Class Expectations above help contribute to the theme of social class expectations?
Answer:The first quote gives us some background information about Mabel and her circumstances growing up. The reader finds out she was not raised in the upper echelons of society. Her family had 10 children, not much money, a farm that didn't produce much, and had to work for everything they had. Even if her circumstances of marriage put her in a better place she still feels the effects of poverty and not having enough or learning enough to know how to act in "polite society." She always feels at a disadvantage in social situations like the garden party.
The social class from which she came and the social situations she now finds herself in affect how she sees herself in the dressmaker's workroom versus in Mrs. Dalloway's drawing-room. From the outside, it might seem that Rose is being nice by calling Mabel's dress "charming" but in Mabel's mind her comments were, in fact, making fun. She perceives a "little satirical pucker of the lips which she had expected." Whether that was intentional on Rose's part (who looks perfect, and high class, and beautiful), it is in the details that this is how Mabel perceives the comments and it makes her feel inferior and of low class. She imagines Robert Haydon as well thinking negatively of her and realizes that in this social situation at the garden party, she does not measure up—this was the life and truth she found herself in and all of the details lead to her not feeling like she fits in the party or the social class she finds herself at the fringes of.
The social class from which she came and the social situations she now finds herself in affect how she sees herself in the dressmaker's workroom versus in Mrs. Dalloway's drawing-room. From the outside, it might seem that Rose is being nice by calling Mabel's dress "charming" but in Mabel's mind her comments were, in fact, making fun. She perceives a "little satirical pucker of the lips which she had expected." Whether that was intentional on Rose's part (who looks perfect, and high class, and beautiful), it is in the details that this is how Mabel perceives the comments and it makes her feel inferior and of low class. She imagines Robert Haydon as well thinking negatively of her and realizes that in this social situation at the garden party, she does not measure up—this was the life and truth she found herself in and all of the details lead to her not feeling like she fits in the party or the social class she finds herself at the fringes of.