Kew Gardens Themes

Though many of the characters in "Kew Gardens" wander together in groups or pairs, they are also often lost in their own individual worlds. Some, like the married couple and the old man, are isolat...

"Kew Gardens" presents particular notions about the proper roles of women in society at this point in history. Though the gardens might seem to be a place where these societal roles could break dow...

This is one of the most obvious, but also the most important, themes of "Kew Gardens." Woolf is pretty obsessed with giving us the most precise details about the flowers, grasses, trees, butterflie...

If "Kew Gardens" had a theme song, we imagine it'd be something like "The Way We Were," by Barbara Streisand. You know the lyrics—it's a classic: Memories light the corner of my mind…During...

While "Kew Gardens" is no "Pygmalion" (which some of you might know as "My Fair Lady"), the story does touch a bit on the rather strict class boundaries found in England in the early 20th century....

Kew Gardens is a place of immense semi-natural beauty. Even the narrator's descriptions of the scene seem to spring from a sense of awe: Look at those flowers! Did you see the butterflies?! Th...

Youth bounces around "Kew Gardens" like the butterflies that float through the garden. It enters the story in several different ways: some characters reminisce about their youth, while other charac...

Ch-ch-changes."Kew Gardens" has a very distinct historical setting. On the surface, the garden setting might seem timeless, but references to war, machinery, and industrialization remind us that th...

Buckle your seats, because we're about to get a little trippy in here. There are lots of different versions of reality at play in "Kew Gardens." Each of the characters is absorbed in his or her...