Working within the consciousness of her characters, Virginia Woolf has–I think–brought in some interesting metaphorical items. This scene, when an old flame, Peter Walsh surprises Mrs. Dalloway at her home while she is mending a dress to wear for her party:
"And how are you?" said Peter Walsh, positively trembling; taking both her hands; kissing both her hands. She’s grown older, he thought, sitting down. I shan’t tell her anything about it, he thought, for she’s grown older. She’s looking at me, he thought, a sudden embarrassment coming over him, though he had kissed her hands. Putting his hand into his pocket, he took out a large pocket-knife and half opened the blade.
Exactly the same, thought Clarissa; the same queer look; the same check suit; a little out of the straight his face is, a little thinner, dryer, perhaps, but he looks awfully well, just the same.
"How heavenly it is to see you again!" she exclaimed. He had his knife out. That’s so like him, she thought.
(…) Here she is mending her dress; mending her dress as usual, he thought; here she’s been sitting all the time I’ve been in India; mending her dress; playing about; going to parties; running to the House and back and all that, he thought, growing more and more irritated (…) So it is, so it is, he thought, shutting his knife with a snap.
(…) And she opened her scissors, and said, did he mind her just finishing what she was doing to her dress, for they had a party that night? (p. 41)
We’ve been inside Clarissa’s head for a couple hours and have already learned how she feels about Peter, how he is still in her thoughts. This meeting then, does it surprise us somehow that they come to it unplanned, and yet fully armed?
It is, as Clarissa says, so like him, when she sees him bring out the knife. As a woman, feeling vulnerable, is this why she finds it so necessary to subtly display her own metaphorical weapon, the scissors?
Interesting, very interesting scene between these two.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology