She is smitten with a perpetual sense of being desolate and she feels that “it was very very dangerous to live even one day“. She is reminded of Sally Seton, when she is combing her hair, and is filled with a sense of contrast between her (Sally Seton’s) carefree life and her own. She acts on impulse and it is difficult to predict when she will be overtaken by a destructive mood. Her temperament works by fits and starts. She is like Virginia Woolf, who too kept herself aloof from her environment and even from the Bloomsbury Group of which she was an important member. Dalloway seems to suffer from a sense of insecurity and strange kind of inadequacy in her life. A Queer CharacterĪpparently sociable and happy in the midst of the round of parties and get-togethers at her home, Mrs. She would not hesitate sacrificing her love for the sake of her independence. “With Peter, everything had to be shared, everything gone into.” Her reason for so doing is to be traced in the fact that Peter Walsh would not allow her independence: But she selected Richard, and not Peter Walsh, when she was confronted with the question of marriage, and never regrets what she had done. Peter Walsh was her companion from childhood and temperamentally she feels attracted towards him more than towards Richard. She at least had this trait in her to a pronounced degree before her marriage with Richard. Her Sense of Feminine FreedomĬlarissa Dalloway has a strong sense of independence. They are a sign of the artificiality of her life and she does not look upon it with favour.

The guests are welcomed to the party apparently with warmth and with the remark that it was heavenly to meet them, but actually they are a source of boredom to her. They are necessary for her but her participation in them is not marked with a gusto or gaiety, as it should really happen when such parties are held. These parties are arranged by her in a business-like manner, as if they were a part and parcel of their life.

Clarissa has developed a particular type of knack for holding such parties and they are a sort of mechanical routine with her.

Clarissa dalloway