If there ever was a fascinating character in Mrs. Dalloway, it would be the overlooked Peter Walsh. With his fumbling knives, with his childish sayings, and his dull letters, Peter has arguably had the greatest influence on Clarissa. He knows Clarissa better than she knows herself, and yet still manages to be "passionately" in love with her. His adoration of her isn't blind, and that is what makes it so compelling; it takes one glance for him to realize that the woman of his dreams will marry another man, and it will take him much more than a lifetime to forget her haunting. For even though he has given his love to a faraway Daisy, it is Clarissa whom he weeps before.
Peter, for me, symbolizes the complex and varying shades of human love. The feelings he possesses for Clarissa is far more complicated than any Disney movie; he hates her, derides her, and pities her. But it is her who stirs the most curious spark within him. After reuniting with her for the first time in years, he leaves, miserable, and dreams of "a solitary traveller" wandering down a path with the majestic "sky and branches" endowed with womanhood; he hears murmurs of "sirens lolloping away on the green sea waves" and sees his past, so tragically romantic. There are no perfect love stories, only snapshots. There is perhaps a human instinct that clings to the happier side of romance, but it is only the complete story that can be so compelling.
1 comment:
I think it's really interesting to think of the character of Peter Walsh as a symbol for an emotion. If he can symbolize "shades of human love," it makes me wonder what the other characters may symbolize, if we were to assign an emotion or quality to each of them. I wonder if we could assign a human quality to each of the characters, qualities that would together create a Woolf's idea of what it is to be a human.
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