🌹Flowers Instead of Words 🌹

Woolf explores Clarissa's regrets about the past in terms of the choices she made concerning the people in her life, Richard, Peter Walsh, and Sally Seton. Woolf's term for these regrets is more accurately described as Clarissa's consideration of the alternatives.

Clarissa recalls Sally’s devil-may-care attitude toward convention. She had a capacity for being completely honest and completely uninhibited. Sally wanted Clarissa to be the same. They shared a passion that Clarissa described as "the strange wild reverie" she experienced with Sally in the garden. While Clarissa knew that Peter desired the same complete and honest love that Sally wanted of her, Clarissa was frightened of the lack of control that complete honesty would bring to her life.

Clarissa said that she loved both Peter and Sally equally. But Sally and Peter represented different concepts of being completely open and honest to Clarissa. Sally wanted Clarissa to give up her independence; Peter wanted complete honesty. Peter's love frightened Clarissa, but at the same time, it captivated and drawn her to him. The warmth, the security and the protection which Richard offered, combined with the knowledge that she and Richard would always be "friends and companions" allowed Clarissa to choose Richard over Peter.

That said, the texture of the novel resists this interpretation. It is Richard who leaves work to walk home to his wife to give her flowers as an expression of his love. We see Richard’s concern for his wife’s health as more typical and less ominous. We can even believe that Richard thinks that Miss Kilman is bad for his daughter, not because he wishes to take over his daughter’s affections, but because he is concerned that Miss Kilman is trying to dominate his daughter and he knows how Clarissa feels about that. Like everything else concerning Richard, this is who he is. He is both nice and kind, even if the book first portrays him as otherwise. We are lucky enough to take a deeper dive into his head during the party and witness how much he cares about his family, especially his wife and daughter. 

The same can be said for the other sections of the novel. Richard is subtle and direct in his affection for his daughter in ways that offers Clarissa the opportunity not to have to work as hard to find love as her mother did. In contrast to Miss Kilman, Richard offers no demand for possession and has no theory to explain his feelings, and Clarissa, like her father, prefers it that way.

Taken as a whole, these threads depict a major theme in the novel, that being the passionate, intense love of Peter and Sally, as contrasted with the more steady, constant love of Richard, and the disparity between love that is given extravagantly and love that is given simply. Woolf indicates that, in some respects, Clarissa remains uncertain, not because there is something wrong with her character, but because, for Woolf, the major characters of a novel are haunted by the minor characters that represent what might have been, and what was given up. Love is steadfast and true for Richard. However, in the case of Clarissa's marriage, love is enigmatic. But, for practical concerns of kindness and steadfastness, Richard is the best of the three lovers. Woolf suggests that readers consider, in the case of what appears to be love between really good people, why is it that people usually think that passion and love are synonymous, and why are people who are really good people usually overlooked?

Justice for Richard's love