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Dolly’s dress symbolizes her naivety about growing up—a naivety that she loses as she transitions out of girlhood into womanhood. The physical changes her dress undergoes throughout the evening mirror the emotional transformation that Dolly experiences over the course of the story. Like her dress, Dolly’s naivety begins fresh and bright but slowly becomes crushed until she discards it. At first, Dolly’s dress is magnificently light, airy, and beautiful. Its pale blue color and soft muslin fabric symbolize Dolly’s innocence, and the way it floats around her gives it a youthful quality that reflects Dolly’s young age. Dolly’s wonder at the dress’s prettiness is childlike and represents her excitement to be grown-up now. Additionally, the dress is for a grown-up event that Dolly has never attended before, indicating her lack of experience in adult society. These details about the dress all emphasize Dolly’s naivety at the beginning of the story. But her time at the ball causes her naivety and her dress to deteriorate. When her dress tears, Dolly’s naïve confidence also wavers. As Dolly grows more embarrassed and ashamed that no one wants to dance with her, her dress gets flattened from sitting for so long and clenching her sweating hands in her lap. When Dolly returns home, tears off her dress, and throws it on the floor, she also symbolically throws off her former naivety. Both her dress and her childish perspective have been crushed by the humiliations of the ball. By the end of the story, Dolly is disillusioned about growing up because she has experienced a humiliating and discouraging aspect of womanhood. Just as her dress loses its glamor, Dolly also loses her optimistic naivety about what it means to grow up.
Dolly’s Dress Quotes in ‘And Women Must Weep’
The ‘And Women Must Weep’ quotes below all refer to the symbol of Dolly’s Dress. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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‘And Women Must Weep’
Quotes
But she could not bring herself to sit, for fear of crushing her dress—it was so light, so airy. How glad she felt now that she had chosen muslin, and not silk as Auntie Cha had tried to persuade her. The gossamer-like stuff seemed to float around her as she moved, and the cut of the dress made her look so tall and so different from everyday that she hardly recognised herself in the glass; the girl reflected there—in palest blue, with a wreath of cornflowers in her hair—might have been a stranger.
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Alas! in getting out a little accident happened. She caught the bottom of one of her flounces—the skirt was made of nothing else—on the iron step, and ripped off the selvedge. Auntie Cha said: “My dear, how clumsy!” She could have cried with vexation.
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And now Dolly saw that the hall was full of lovely dresses, some much, much prettier than hers, which suddenly began to seem rather too plain, even a little dowdy; perhaps after all it would have been better to have chosen silk.
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Men, looking so splendid in their white shirt fronts, would walk across the floor and seem to be coming […] And then at the last minute they ran away—and it wasn’t her at all, but a girl sitting three seats further on; one who wasn’t even pretty, or her dress either. But her own dress was beginning to get quite tashy, from the way she squeezed her hot hands down in her lap.
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She wanted only to be quite alone…where nobody could see her…where nobody would ever see her again […] she tore off the wreath and ripped open her dress, now crushed to nothing from so much sitting, and threw them from her anywhere…
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Get the entire ‘And Women Must Weep’ LitChart as a printable PDF.
Dolly’s Dress Symbol Timeline in ‘And Women Must Weep’
The timeline below shows where the symbol Dolly’s Dress appears in ‘And Women Must Weep’. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
‘And Women Must Weep’
Dolly has finally finished getting dressed and waits for Auntie Cha to be ready for the evening. Although Miss Biddons tells...
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Dolly waits for the cab, self-consciously trying to keep her dress and white gloves pristine. She is filled with anticipation, because Auntie Cha is about to...
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...out of the wagonette, she accidentally rips a ribbon off the bottom edge of her dress. Auntie Cha calls Dolly clumsy, and Dolly is dismayed. The dress can’t be mended, so...
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...for their dance partners instead. Dolly loses hope that she will be selected, and her dress starts to get crushed from clutching her hands in her lap.
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...Wanting to be left alone, Dolly locks herself in her room and tears off her dress, which is now thoroughly crushed. She overhears Auntie Cha proclaim loudly that Dolly “didn’t take”...
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