All this had been absolutely destroyed, shown...
By lambrosaspqf, 09:57

All this had been absolutely destroyed, shown up, exploded, the moment she came into MrsDalloway's drawing-room What she had thought that evening when, sitting over the teacups, MrsDalloway's invitation came, was that, of course, she could not be fashionableIt 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 be 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 glassShe 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 peopleShe 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 fendi replica spy bag trying to find some spell to annul this pain, to make this agony endurableTags 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 repeatedIf she could say that over often enough and make herself see the flies, she would become numb, chill, frozen, dumbNow she could see flies crawling slowly out of a saucer of milk with their wings stuck together

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