by, she reaches a balance, which enables her to enjoy life, to find pleasure in the least little things the odors of the floral shop, the vitality of London, and the part as perfect host-ess: "What she liked was simply life." Her passions for the past, as well as the future, allow her the power of taking hold of an experience and "turning it round, slowly, in the light." In the past she finds relief from the present.
Thus, the eighteen-year old Clarissa she remembers is a young child whose father dislikes her friends, whose aunts are too old to relate to her, whose mother is apparently dead. And as a child her young mind is easily influenced by Sally Seton, a friend who offers her cigars and runs through the hallway naked. Sally gives her a sense of freedom - is a symbol of freedom - from the narrow social world of Bourton. For this reason, when Sally kisses her cheek, Clarissa's feelings go deeply. She needs this sense of freedom to escape from her sheltered, social-ladder life. But un-fortunately, Clarissa's freedom never develops further than this; Sally's kiss remains the climax of her life and she fails to pro-gress further than this point. Thus, there remains a young quality in her, a quality which makes her appear virginal, not because she continually reverts to her childhood ("the blinds flapping in the windows") but also because she is unable to look deeply into life, to go beyond the material qualities. When she visits Miss Pym's flower shop, for example, she calls it her own flower shop. She has retained the selfish quality of a child, and she calls the part her party. Clarissa even goes so far as to picture herself as a nun: "She felt like a nun who has left the world and feels fold round her the familiar veils and the response to old devotions." And later Woolf describes her in this same light: "Like a nun withdrawing, or a child exploring a tower, she went upstairs . . . She could not dispel a virginity preserved thro...