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Peter Walsh’s Recollection of the Memory when Clarissa had Rejected his Marriage Proposal.
The words of Clarissa continues to ring in the mind of Peter Walsh while passing through the London Streets: “Remember my party, remember my party.” Peter fails to keep Clarissa away from his mind. He thinks that Clarissa has grown hard, sentimental, and proud. He does not like the way she had introduced her daughter, “My Elizabeth”, she could have simply said “Elizabeth’’. He recalls I that as a girl Clarissa was timid and in the middle age this timidity I has become conventionality. Perhaps he annoyed her for being emotional and sentimental. He has certainly made fool of himself. The world might have called him unsuccessful, yet the future of the world lay in the hands of youths as he was some thirty years before.
Peter’s attention diverts for a moment to the boys marching along in military uniforms. He tries to keep pace with them but fails and lags behind. Peter Walsh feels himself extremely delightful. Now he sees a young woman walking in front of him. She is damn beautiful woman. In her enchanting personality Peter perceives a person he has always had in his mind. It is Clarissa as she was thirty years before. Again Clarissa’s voice rings in his ears “Remember my party remember my party.”
It is a fine morning and now Peter turns towards Regent’s park; At that moment a girl steps down from her motor car and enters her home in a very straight forward manner. This home looks like the world of the Dalloway's full of material comforts and achievements, very much different from his own life that is called by others a failure. Peter loves England a lot because of her splendid achievements, world of doctors, businessmen, politicians and material splendor.
In the Regent’s Park he gets a seat beside a grey nurse and he soon starts snoring. He rises with uttering words: “The death of the soul”. And these words remind him of a summer at Bourton, when he was deeply in love with Clarissa. He recalls the time when Sally had asked if any unmarried woman could have a baby, would it affect one’s feelings and Clarissa had exclaimed, “Oh; I shall never be able to speak to her again.” Clarissa’s manner at that time was arrogant and prudish and Peter Walsh was annoyed by that. At that moment also he had said “The death of the soul”. Thus Peter remembers his past. He remembers that evening when Richard Dalloway first came to Bourton, and he saw Clarissa talking to him. Mechanically, he said to herself, “she will marry that man”. Clarissa introduced the young man as “Wickham’, and Dalloway corrected her by saying, “My name is Dalloway”. Moreover, Clarissa once scolded Sally for making fun of Dalloway. This had confirmed more Peter’s feeling that Clarissa would marry Richard Dalloway. Thus Peter decided to settle the matter finally. He met Clarissa by the fountain at a distance from the house. He asked her to make it clear whom she would marry, Richard Dalloway or Peter Walsh. Clarissa had very coldly rejected his offer by saying, “It is no use, it is no use, this is the end.” Tears ran down from his cheeks. “She turned, she left him, she went away”. It was terribly awful for him. He went away that very night and never saw her again.