Identity Crisis at the Party

Abstract

. The present contribution offers a comparative analysis of James Joyce’s short story “The Dead” and Virginia Woolf’s “The New Dress”, reflecting on the possible reasons that could explain the inexistence of previous critical comparisons of two texts written by two authors whose work has been amply studied and who have been frequently related by criticism. Considering the recurrent motif and context of the party in modernist literature, the study focuses on the identity crises experienced by the protagonists of both short stories. Taking into account Anthony Elliott’s reflections on the agents involved in the construction of the self, as well as recalling Joyce’s concept of “epiphany” and Woolf’s notion of “moment of being”, we analyse the concomitances detected in two stories that deal with the identity crises suffered by their respective protagonists, that deploy an analogous structure and share the use of similar symbolism.