Flowering Life in Mrs. Dalloway (Part 2)

    

    After reading more of Mrs. Dalloway, I noticed additional flower symbolism and would like to analyze this idea of flowers concerning life, further, since I will probably write about this in my essay. I think for different characters in the story, flowers represent different things. Not all characters are directly described or related to flowers, some simply interact with flowers, but even here, there are underlying messages in their interactions.

    For Clarissa, as mentioned in one of my previous blog posts, flowers represent femininity and her independence. For Richard, however, I think flowers represent love. We first see Richard interact with flowers, as he “handles the bouquet awkwardly, like a weapon”. Then we see Richard mustering enough strength to tell Clarissa he loves her, as he holds the roses out to her, but cannot utter the simple phrase “I love you”. It is funny that for Richard, flowers (love) is displayed as a weapon. His flowers do the work for him, they shield him from having to directly say “I love you”. Giving flowers was a brave act for Richard, and he “handles the bouquet awkwardly”, just as he perhaps “handles love awkwardly” in his relationship with Clarissa. Also, the jarring blend of colors, red and white roses, might represent the differences between Clarissa and Richard blended in their marriage. It is important to note that Clarissa immediately puts the roses she receives from Richard into a vase (recall from my previous blog post, that she criticizes how Roses are usually plucked just to be put stiffly upright in a vase, and she correlates this stiffness to womanhood in the twentieth century), perhaps this is hinting at how she feels in her relationship with Richard, “stuck upright in a vase”. 

    Shifting gears, I would also like to mention briefly that Sally Seaton says in a letter to Peter Walsh that he reminds her of blue hydrangeas, a type of flower which represents frigidity and apology. Ironically, Peter’s life seems to be full of regrets. Another example of a direct relation between a character and flowers in Mrs. Dalloway is when Clarissa associates hyacinths with Elizabeth, claiming that Elizabeth has become more serious at seventeen years. Hyacinths are flowers that stand upright, and here is another example where age is associated with flowering and “stiffness”. As Elizabeth grows, Clarissa comments on how Elizabeth used to be playful and is now much more“serious”. Quite paradoxically, hyacinths can either represent “playfulness” or “sorrow/constancy”, depending on the color; although, Clarissa does not specify a color. 

    To conclude, Peter Walsh states that life is an unknown garden full of twists and turns. Here, Peter plainly says that the flower motifs in Mrs. Dalloway represent life. Further, flowers give the reader a visual and sensory symbol to better understand life, and it’s progression, especially in the context of Clarissa Dalloway's life. In Mrs. Dalloway flowers represent the past, the present, the living, death, individuality, femininity, love, regret (depending on the character), and thus these sub-symbols come together to represent the totality of twentieth-century life.