“So Peter Walsh and Clarissa, sitting side by side, challenged each other.” (MD 44) While constantly challenging each other, neither would have found any peace. Their lives would have both been devoted completely to each other. “But with Peter everything had to be shared; everything gone into. And it was intolerable, and when it came to the scene in the little garden by the fountain, she had to break with him or they would have been destroyed, both of them ruined, she was convinced.” (MD 8)
Clarissa thinks that Peter is a failure because “he had never done a thing that they had talked of.” (MD 8) “She could not imagine Peter or Richard taking the trouble to give a party for no reason whatever,” (MD 122) which is why she married Richard, or rather why she could not marry Peter. Each person has an offering to make to the world and Clarissa’s offering is her gift of “knowing people almost by instinct.” (MD 9) She forms it into her parties, bringing people together because “if only they could be brought together.” (MD 122) Since Peter was so self-centered and volatile and did not see the relationships between people as she did, she would not have been free to change, create, or combine them. He would have driven her to die young. He demanded sympathy, “(For in some ways no one understood him, felt with him, as Clarissa did)--their exquisite intimacy,” (MD 46) yet she felt, having freed herself from his grasp, “It was his silly unconventionality, his weakness, his lack of the ghost of a notion what any one else was feeling that annoyed her, had always annoyed her; and now at his age, how silly!” (MD 46)
Clarissa lives a long life, celebrating life, and Richard thinks of her in “starts, as at luncheon, when he saw her quite distinctly; their whole life.” (MD 115) He sees her as a miracle, as something he is lucky to have and to be cherished. He brings her flowers. He can not say that he loves her, directly, but when he goes to speak, she wonders “Why? There were the roses.” (MD 199) She knows that she is loved and appreciated. Richard tells her not to be a fool, “Now, my dear, don’t be a fool. Hold this- fetch that.” (MD 75)
Like Miss Kilman, “she liked people who were ill.” (MD 136) She had power over them, power to make them think of her and her overwhelming generosity and beauty. Clarissa’s chosen life was more private. She chose not to burn out. “She had a perfectly clear notion of what she wanted.” (MD 75) Clarissa feels the passing of time and the terror of death and the heat of excitement burning close to her, but she has Richard “so that she could crouch like a bird and gradually revive.” (185) With Richard, “nothing could be slow enough, nothing last too long,” there was no need to get excited. She would not be considered heartless for not matching passionate emotion at the right times. She could do things slowly her own way. With Peter “-and then to his utter surprise, suddenly thrown by those uncontrollable forces thrown through the air, he burst into tears; wept; wept without the least shame, sitting on the sofa, the tears running down his cheeks,” (MD 46) she would have had to be thrown as well, sharing everything. If she did not match him, afterward he would always be “wondering whether by calling at that hour he had annoyed her; overcome with shame at having been a fool; wept; been emotional; told her everything, as usual, as usual.”(MD 49) She would not be allowed to relax. Virginia Woolf feared this uncontrolled flight with good reason, having spent years out of her mind. To fly like that, to feel such excesses of emotion, would be like Septimus’s feeling the pain of the whole war himself: overwhelmingly madness and death inducing. Richard bade Clarissa not be to a fool, to calm down and think through her feelings. “And there is a dignity in people; a solitude; even between husband and wife a gulf; and that one must respect, thought Clarissa, watching him open the door; for one would not part with it oneself, or take it, against his will, from one’s husband, without losing one’s independence, one’s self-respect-something, after all, priceless.” (MD 120) Virginia was unevenly between these extremes. Her husband was for unwinding around, but she craved his sympathy and good opinion. He petted and protected her, but she often felt stifled and frustrated by ‘the rules,’ designed to keep her under control. Her inspiration and excitement came from her friends.
Of all of her main characters, only Mrs. Dalloway survives. “It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was.”(MD 194) She kept her identity. Virginia felt that she asked too much of Leonard, “I am wasting your life,” (Lee 747) and she allowed herself to drown even though she could swim. She put rocks in her pockets. She walked into the river. She slipped up somewhere and misjudged and was overwhelmed and lost hope. Feeling powerless, she died. How can that be taken seriously? You just do not do that. It helps no one. So what did Virginia Woolf care about most? No idea, but she does present her readers with possible options for themselves to care about. The most evidence is for managing relationships so that the effects of love sustain and enhance yourself and those around you.