Momentous parties have long provided dramatic scenes in fiction, from Natasha-s first ball in War and Peace to Lizzie meeting Darcy in Pride and Prejudice to J. Edgar Hoover consorting with Truman Capote in Don DeLillo-s -The Black and White Ball-.
Revelry can be revealing of character, as in Jay Gatsby-s extravagant bash in F. Scott Fitzgerald-s The Great Gatsby and the decadent partying of the jaded expats in Ernest Hemingway-s The Sun Also Rises. More decorous affairs can conceal profound depths, as in Katherine Mansfield-s -The Garden Party- and the parties at the centre of two modernist masterpieces, Virginia Woolf-s Mrs. Dalloway and James Joyce-s -The Dead-. Glamour with a gothic twist makes an appearance here in the fancy dress ball at Manderley from Daphne Du Maurier-s Rebecca and in Edgar Allan Poe-s -The Masque of the Red Death-, at which Death himself is a guest.
But there is room on this dance floor for humour as w
