Peter and Clarissa: a Complex Duo

I am fascinated by the conversation Clarissa and Peter have after Peter returns from India. Prior to this conversation, I was unsure about Peter's relationship to Clarissa. It was clear that he played a significant role in Clarissa's life because she thought about him often. However, he seemed like a brother or bully, seeing as most of her memories of him were negative. Reading this conversation allowed me to delve into their complicated past, and it changed my perception completely.

Quickly, I realized how well Clarissa and Peter knew each other. She practically predicts when Peter would take out his pocket knife, and he correctly notices the insecurity in the way Clarissa introduces her daughter ("Here is my Elizabeth"). But there was something else, a "pressure of an emotion" shared between them. It was likely that this was the first time in a long time that the two had discussed their past in Bourton. But what made this conversation so emotional for the characters and enlightening for the reader?

Intimacy was definitely part of it. The reader learns Peter's motives behind his tactless "the perfect hostess" line: jealousy. He was in love with Clarissa and "would have done anything to hurt her after seeing her with Dalloway." Similarly, Clarissa asks herself, "why did I make up my mind - not to marry him?" When Peter breaks the news that he is in love with a woman he met in India, a "curious ironical sweetness" arises as Peter "placed [the woman] in this ridiculous way before Clarissa." As if this newfound love interest could never compare to the intimacy that Clarissa and Peter had shared. Nevertheless, something changes between the pair after this declaration. As Clarissa states it, "as if he had set light to...the brisk sea-salted air of their intimacy." The grasp on their idyllic relationship was fading, and neither seemed too happy to see it go.

But it wasn't just each other that they longed for. They were nostalgic for Bourton, and everything that went along with it. Youth, for example. "For he was not old," Peter thought, "his life was not over." The realization that the past they discussed seemed so far away was clearly daunting for the pair. This was also quite literally a life-changing time period for Clarissa. She had two suitors, Peter and Richard, not to mention the woman with whom she experienced the "most exquisite moment of her whole life," Sally Seton. Questions undoubtedly crossed Clarissa's mind regarding her life at eighteen ("What if I had chosen differently? Who would I be today?"). 

Clarissa and Peter share a history. More importantly, they share nostalgia for that history. Now that they have revealed this nostalgia to each other, I am most curious as to how this will affect the rest of the novel. Will they think of Bourton differently after this interaction? Could seeing each other again after such a long time serve as closure, or provoke more memories to flood their everyday existences?

The conversation ends abruptly, just as Peter attempted to ask Clarissa, "Are you happy?" What a clever way to end this enlightening scene, but so frustrating! Is Clarissa Dalloway happy? Is Peter? Were they happier in Bourton? Would they be happier together?

Only time will tell, I suppose.