Quote 1
[…] he was an adventurer, reckless, he thought, swift, daring, indeed (landed as he was last night from India) a romantic buccaneer, careless of all these damned proprieties, yellow dressing-gowns, pipes, fishing-rods, in the shop windows; and respectability and evening parties and spruce old men wearing white slips beneath their waistcoats. He was a buccaneer. (3.13)
To make himself feel better, Peter likes to think of himself as something of a wild man. Knowing that he’ll never be a member of British high society, Peter defines himself as being <em>against</em> conformity, and so thinks of himself as much more interesting than stiffs like Hugh.
Quote 2
Such are the visions which ceaselessly float up, pace beside, put their faces in front of, the actual thing; often overpowering the solitary traveller and taking away from him the sense of the earth, the wish to return, and giving him for substitute a general peace […]. (4.4)
As he drifts off on the park bench, Peter imagines himself as the "solitary traveler." He has visions, and feels a sense of loneliness and peace at the same time. Are loneliness and peace often found together in <em>Mrs Dalloway</em>?
Quote 3
Boys in uniform, carrying guns, marched with their eyes ahead of them, marched, their arms stiff, and on their faces an expression like the letters of a legend written round the base of a statue praising duty, gratitude, fidelity, love of England. (3.5)
Peter admires the soldiers walking down the street. These young men bring up feelings of pride in the British Empire even in cynical Peter.
Quote 4
For why go back like this to the past? he thought. Why make him think of it again? Why make him suffer, when she had tortured him so infernally? Why? (1.59)
Peter still suffers emotionally over being rejected by Clarissa. He can’t help but constantly return to the past in order to try to make sense of their relationship.
Quote 5
So she left him. And he had a feeling that they were all gathered together in a conspiracy against him – laughing and talking – behind his back. There he stood by Miss Parry's chair as though he had been cut out of wood, he talking about wild flowers. Never, never had he suffered so infernally! (4.20)
When Peter meets Richard, he immediately knows that Clarissa will marry him. He has been replaced, and feels abandoned.
Quote 6
I was more unhappy than I've ever been since, he thought. And as if in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall. (2.62)
Peter recalls the misery of being rejected by Clarissa. Even in present day, he feels the misery just as keenly as he felt it before.
Quote 7
There was Regent's Park. Yes. As a child he had walked in Regent's Park – odd, he thought, how the thought of childhood keeps coming back to me – the result of seeing Clarissa, perhaps; for women live much more in the past than we do, he thought. (3.18)
Clarissa represents Peter’s past. He can’t stop dwelling on memories of her – and yet he believes that women are way more sentimental than men! Try again, Pete.
Quote 8
It was at Bourton that summer, early in the 'nineties, when he was so passionately in love with Clarissa. (4.12)
The summer at Bourton was a formative experience for Peter. He has never felt passion as great as the love he felt for Clarissa that summer. Do you think he's idealizing things in his memories, or was this actually the case?
Quote 9
She and Peter had settled down together. […] They would discuss the past. With the two of them (more even than with Richard) she shared her past; the garden; the trees; old Joseph Breitkopf singing Brahms without any voice; the drawing-room wallpaper; the smell of the mats. (6.76)
Peter and Sally haven’t seen each other since the days of Bourton. To Peter, Sally is one of the only people who understands the depth of his love for Clarissa.