Edna St. Vincent Millay's The Plaid Dress discusses the importance of a dress and the feelings that this dress evokes. This garment awakens the poet's views on the past, creating a dramatic and remorseful tone. The poet wears this dress at a formal evening, which therefore creates a drastic opposition between this proper atmosphere and the past of the dress, which the poet elaborates on. This contrast seems to create a mask for Millay to hide behind during the evening with fear and guilt. This general feeling of self-blame that the poet seems to generate adds to the depressing and oppressive mood of the poem. The way Millay moves through the poem is very significant towards the reader's understanding of the two ideas that seem to be the main themes: a two-sided mask that the poet wears and the culpability that she feels.

Initially, the reader is immediately...