Page 379 - DENG404_FICTION

Unit 30: Virginia Woolf — Mrs. Dalloway: Themes and Characterization

himself that he no longer loves Clarissa, but his grief at losing her rises painfully to the surface Notes
when he is in her presence, and his obsession with her suggests that he is still attracted to her
and may even long for renewed romance. Even when he gathers his anger toward Clarissa and
tells her about his new love, he cannot sustain the anger and ends up weeping. Peter acts as
a foil to Richard, who is stable, generous, and rather simple. Unlike calm Richard, Peter is like
a storm, thundering and crashing, unpredictable even to himself.
Peter’s unhealed hurt and persistent insecurity make him severely critical of other characters,
especially the Dalloways. He detests Clarissa’s bourgeois lifestyle, though he blames Richard
for making her into the kind of woman she is. Clarissa intuits even his most veiled criticisms,
such as when he remarks on her green dress, and his judgments strongly affect her own
assessments of her life and choices. Despite his sharp critiques of others, Peter cannot clearly
see his own shortcomings. His self-obsession and neediness would have suffocated Clarissa,
which is partly why she refused his marriage proposal as a young woman. Peter acquiesces
to the very English society he criticizes, enjoying the false sense of order it offers, which he
lacks in his life. Despite Peter’s ambivalence and tendency toward analysis, he still feels life
deeply. While Clarissa comes to terms with her own mortality, Peter becomes frantic at the
thought of death. He follows a young woman through the London streets to smother his
thoughts of death with a fantasy of life and adventure. His critical nature may distance him
from others, but he values his life nonetheless.

Task In what famous London Square does Peter See the attractive young women?

Sally Seton

Sally Seton exists only as a figure in Clarissa’s memory for most of the novel, and when she
appears at Clarissa’s party, she is older but still familiar. Though the women have not seen
each other for years, Sally still puts Clarissa first when she counts her blessings, even before
her husband or five sons. As a girl, Sally was without inhibitions, and as an adult at the party,
she is still effusive and lacks Clarissa’s restraint. Long ago, Sally and Clarissa plotted to
reform the world together. Now, however, both are married, a fate they once considered a
“catastrophe.” Sally has changed and calmed down a great deal since the Bourton days, but
she is still enough of a loose cannon to make Peter nervous and to kindle Clarissa’s old warm
feelings. Both Sally and Clarissa have yielded to the forces of English society to some degree,
but Sally keeps more distance than Clarissa does. She often takes refuge in her garden, as she
despairs over communicating with humans. However, she has not lost all hope of meaningful
communication, and she still thinks saying what one feels is the most important contribution
one can make to society.
Clarissa considers the moment when Sally kissed her on the lips and offered her a flower at
Bourton the “most exquisite moment of her whole life.” Society would never have allowed
that love to flourish, since women of Clarissa’s class were expected to marry and become
society wives. Sally has always been more of a free spirit than Clarissa, and when she arrives
at Clarissa’s party, she feels rather distant from and confused by the life Clarissa has chosen.
The women’s kiss marked a true moment of passion that could have pushed both women
outside of the English society they know, and it stands out in contrast to the confrontation
Peter remembers between Sally and Hugh regarding women’s rights. One morning at Bourton,
Sally angrily told Hugh he represented the worst of the English middle class and that he was
to blame for the plight of the young girls in Piccadilly. Later, Hugh supposedly kissed her in

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 373