"Mrs. Dalloway"

Vriginia Woolf added quite a few characters that we follow throughout the novel. I wanted to discuss Clarissa and Peter together and figure out from which perspective, hers or his, are we better able to see reality from.

I want to start with Clarissa because she in the protagonist in the story. I classify her as the person everyone loves to hate but still socializes with. She has superficiality oozing out of every pore of her body; she is a cold, loveless woman who lives in a dream rather than reality. There are so many instances within the novel which will back up this characterization. One such example would be when she was in the flower shop and the car passed by the window. The car held some unknown important figure and when it passed by the flower shop she immediately stood up straighter and gave herself a look of importance and nobility. Her social status was so important to her that she felt it necessary to make herself look important to whoever was in the car. Another example would be when someone brought up the death of Septimus at her party she was extremely disgruntled. She couldn't understand why someone would bring that up! She even went as far as to think that his death was a statement about her party! Any normal person wouldn't have this train of thought but she did! Getting on to the subject of being loveless, Clarissa hasn't been truly in love since she was with Sally. Sally was the only person Clarissa loved with enthusiasm and since then Clarissa has only been living a lie. She and her husband barely see each other and she is okay with this; she would rather spend her time alone with her past thoughts and memories of happiness. Her poor husband tried everything to please her yet it never works. So this, to me, is being so loveless and cold towards the person you are meant to love and cherish. Clarissa has only a few true friends and Peter happens to be one of them.

Peter is one of only two characters who we can actually trust in the novel. When we see the world through his eyes his interpretation of everything is unclouded by illusions, unlike Clarissa's. He is the one character that Clarissa feels vulnerable around which brings out a side of Clarissa which shows how weak and unhappy she is. He is the exact opposite of her in every possible way, he is perceptive, honest, and he doesn't hold his society in high regard. I would classify him as the character everyone wants to know more about due to his likeable personality.

So from this alone it should be really easy to figure out that Peter is the one character we can trust. He states things the way they are and doesn't fuss around with trying to be proper. I feel that he is one of the few characters that we can feel any emotion over since he is, for a lack of a better word, normal. So, I'll wrap this up by saying that spotting the person to trust in the novel is simple and almost from the get go you can tell it's Peter