The New Dress

"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, 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.)"

Is she saying that women are like the flies? She wouldn't include the men right? And who makes her see herself this way, men or other women, or both?

Self-esteem or confidence is a big issue with women in society. Still today in women who are 12 and women who are 52, they are always comparing themselves to other people and continually see themselves in a worse light than the other. I would assume here that only women are the flies and the men are the ones that push them to the ground. Later in the story she says the man pushed her to the middle of the bowl to drown so to speak. I would say that she sees herself this way because of her lack of self worth, because the way men objectify women, and other women out of their own insecurities keep her down and feeling this way.

I also think that this is a way in which women can be quite secrective. The whole story she is very worried about her dress and her appearance, although it seems to be a metaphor for her deeper feelings of just being an outcast in this paticular party. But also the other people from the party are seemingly nice and sweet to her, but she is always saying how they really have mean feelings toward her and don't like her. She is very concerned the whole story with being judged, this comes from a society that constantly judges and objectifies woman.