"Odalisque with Yellow Persian Robe and Anemones" by Matisse
Peter Walsh notes with approval an ambulance going by; the ambulance is carrying Septimus' mangled body. Peter thinks about himself, and especially about what one might call his love life. Based on this reading, and what's come before, is Peter a sympathetic figure? Is he a fool? Both?
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Peter Walsh is a very sensitive and emotional person, and is only sympathetic in the sensitive sense. Peter feels so much emotion throughout his life. Because Peter is so emotional and easily affected by his surroundings, he is a fool.
"Oh it was a letter from her!...and he would have to read it. Here was another of those meetings, bound to be painful! To read her letter needed the devil of an effort.... But it upset him. It annoyed him. He wished she hadn't written it."
From this passage, Peter can be seen as sensitive because of his mood swings. First Peter is overcome with joy and excitement from Clarrisa's letter. Then he this excitement changed to him feeling obliged to read the letter. Then that emotion changed to nervousness and a little bit of fear by him saying that to open and read the letter would take "the devil of an effort." Peter was so affected by the letter that he became annoyed and upset. Clarrisa did not fulfill his expectations; on the contrary she let him down. This emotion changed to resentment of Clarrissa writing the letter. Peter being so malleable by his environment and other people or being so easily manipulated is what makes him a fool.
Peter Walsh, from what I can draw, is not a fool but self-conscious. I don't believe that Peter is easily manipulated by his environment for I think that is what he carries with him when he thinks of Clarissa.
In particular, one passage talks about when Clarissa and Peter were in a bus together going up Shaftesbury Avenue. "It was to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known. For how could they know each other? You met every day; then not for six months, or years.It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people. But she said, sitting on the bus going up Shaftesbury Avenue, she felt herself everywhere; not "here, here, here"; and she tapped the back of the seat; but everywhere. She waved her hand, going up Shaftesbury Avenue. She was all that. So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places." (pg 149)
I find that this passage not only tells us about Peter but proves what we discussed in class today: Clarissa physically reacts to her environment. The bus is moving past quickly, and she is seeing everything, and she is amazed; she believes she is not one place but every place. Peter was talking about how little a person knows about people - of their own kind. But then he goes on to say that to know Clarissa - or any human being - is to seek out the people that complete them. This goes back to the fact of Peter's and Clarrisa's relationship with one another: how they seemed to balance each other out in conversation and pleasantness.
I also feel that Clarissa balances out Peter because of how contrasting their reaction to physicality is. Clarissa, as we know, strongly reacts to her environment in a physical way, taking everything in but all at the same time, which gives Clarissa's consciousness a manic feel to it. Peter, on the other hand, seems to withhold from his environment, almost in a self-conscious way.
In a passage when Peter is watching the ambulance go by, Peter thinks to himself about how it's okay to cry - or to do anything emotional - when one is by themselves. "And yet, though Peter Walsh, as the ambulance turned the corner though the light high bell cold be heard down the next street and still farther as it crossed the Tottenham Court Road, chiming constantly, it is the privilege of loneliness; in privacy one may do as one chooses. One might weep is no one saw. It had been his undoing - this suspceptiility - in Anglo-Indian society; not weeping at the right time, or laughing either. I have that in me, he tough standing by the pillar-box, which could now dissolve in tears." (148).
In this - while also going back to that noise element we discussed in class today - Peter is confessing that he has been taught not to feel when it's 'appropriate' to feel; he must contract his emotions till he is alone. This balances Clarissa out because she herself is hyper-sensitive to any emotion: this goes from feeling happiness to curiousity and everything inbetween. Peter, on the other hand, almost marvels at Clarissa's ability to do so, and I think, also admires her for it.
Checking in.
.. even though no one has said anything new in the last half hour ...
Peter Walsh is not necessarily sympathetic but he is considerate of what the marriage between him and Daisy would do and how it would affect her. He also thinks about what Clarissa is feeling and he knows that in some way they both regret not being together to a certain extent. I don't think that he is a fool in fact i think in some ways he is smart. He didn't marry clarissa because as much as they loved each other they their personalities did not work together although they will always have a strong lust for each other. Marrying Daisy is the easiest path for him but also uninteresting because it would be too easy. He is not a fool because he was smart enough to see that marrying Clarissa would not benifit him but i'm not sure marrying Daisy is the correct answer for him either because it is necessary to have some conflict to keep a relationship going.
I agree with Kim in saying that Peter is in some ways self conscious. It is not that he is a fool or sympathetic but rather that he is a thoughtful person, perhaps in fact too thoughtful, for he i constantly putting himself in a position to criticize himself and Clarissa and second guess himself. Though in the end he knows that it would not have worked in a marriage, he continues to think about he and Clarissa. His thoughts revolve around this for several pages and have everytime we have heard from Peter. So maybe he is foolish in his tendency to live in his past, but i also feel that he and Clarissa are still considerably in love with each other.
I don't think Peter is a fool, but rather confused, which seems to be the case with many characters. Emotionally confused and self-conscious. I kind of get the impression that Peter is also afraid of getting hurt, as seen through his jealousy. He says he doesn't love these two ladies (I think), although really he still cares about them and knows that whatever they do or say he'll get hurt, so he becomes jealous of other guys. He's still confused in love, at his old age.
I think being jealous kind of says he's sensitive, but really, I don't think Peter is that emotional. Well he is, but not extra-so compared to other people. I think his circumstances are probably quite common: loving two people but not really, trying to figure out what to do, he's just confused!
I think that Peter Walsh is somewhat of a sympathetic figure, yet at the same time somewhat of a fool - a sympathetic figure because he keeps going over and over in his mind how his marriage to Clarissa might've been like, and at this point the readers know that both of them slightly regret not getting married to each other. The readers feel sympathetic toward him because he was pondering over what he could've had. Also, Peter is somewhat of a fool, because he keeps thinking about how his marriage to Clarissa might've been like even though he's already married to Daisy - he knows he can't go back, Clarissa has her own life with Richard, and he has his own life with Daisy. He reminisces upon things that aren't going to change.
I agree with everything that has been said about Peter. I believe that he is emotional but not sympathetic. He is able to show emotion when we are inside his head but we never see him being emotional when we are hearing other characters thoughts. On the contrary, through Clarissa we see how easily he criticizes her and is very indifferent when she tells him everything that is going on with her after not seeing him for so long.
I would also say that Peter is not so much a fool as just a person who sometimes sees things in the wrong light. After reading the letter from Clarissa he thinks “Why couldn’t she let him be? After all, she had married Dalloway, and lived with him in perfect happiness all these years.” This is a very bitter way to react to a letter from the woman he used to love and proposed to. Someone else may have thought about how special it was to receive the letter, or become excited because she thought it was “heavenly” to see him. Peter does not think like this at all, he goes straight for the self-centered thoughts about how hard it is to keep thinking about Clarissa and how he wishes she would just leave him alone, when he was the one who showed up at her house unexpected. In the hotel he thinks of how she must envy him after kissing his hand. Never does a thought cross his mind about how much he regrets not marrying her, how wonderful their life would have been. He thinks very logically through why their marriage would not have worked out. Peter then thinks about how he attracts women and what a gentleman he is. His next train of thought leads to “He became absorbed; he became busied with his own concerns…” He also thinks about how he wants to be able to love more than one person but that Daisy should not be able to, “to want a variety in love, though it would make him furious if Daisy loved anybody else, furious!” This is almost a classic stereotype of a man thinking that a woman should be completely devoted to him even if he is involved with multiple women. In this passage Peter Walsh appears to be more self-centered than sympathetic of anyone else’s feelings.
checking in.
i think everybody agrees that he is sympathetic, somewhat of a "fool" in that he is confused and emotional.
I not so sure that Peter Walsh is a fool either. I agree very strongly in the idea that he is perhaps much thoughtful of a person. He thinks too much, thus making an impression on others of foolishness. He is self-conscious because he is a thinker. Peter is a thinker. He thinks about everything before he does it and I have the feeling that he's not very "I'm gonna go for it!" unless he feels he's thought it through thoroughly. I feel like the passage that Kim provided us from page 148 about him learning how to not feel when appropriate. I believe he hasn't fully changed or even 50% for that matter. He hasn't learned. He's learning in progress, but has not gotten the milk out of the cow.
Checking in….nothing really new to say.
Checking in...I forgot to touch on the fact that I agree with him being sympathetic also.
Peter, to the extent that he is interesting and his emotions are worthy of sympathy, is sympathetic. He, though, is somewhat of a fool, I think. He goes through life, falling in love here, there, deeply with Clarissa, but also perfectly willing to follow a random woman through the streets of London for awhile. He works on deciding what to do for the rest of his life, with not the most grounded, thought-through ideas (talking of going to Oxford, of bringing Daisy to London, etc.). He does possess some wisdom, though, I think. A wise fool, if you will. His observations and thoughts about Clarissa and her nature, while sometimes seemingly biased based on how he feels about her, are for the most part spot-on, and he articulates much detail about how she behaves.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that Peter is a fool. I think the crux of his personality lies in the fact that most of his emotions are rooted in the past -- in the interactions and experiences he had as a young man at Bourton with Clarissa and Hugh. He seems to be one of those people who didn't manage to figure everything out while they were young, and so go around in middle-age trying to make sense of what happened during their formative years. I think he is fairly repressed, in the sense that he cannot come to terms with his feelings for Clarissa. Every experience he has triggers a memory -- which is an endearing characteristic, but shows that he still has a lot of repressed feelings to work through. For example, losing Clarissa to Richard is still a sore spot for him, whether or not he admits it.
I think that, as Annabel pointed out, Peter Walsh is extremely sensitive. Every interaction he has triggers a strong emotion which he must then examine. This makes him act foolish at times, like when he received the letter from Clarissa at the hotel. Things of minor significance take on great importance in his mind, which is a trait we see in a lot of characters -- Clarissa, Peter, Ms. Kilman even.
My first thought during the scene where Peter hears the ambulance was that he lacked empathy because of how the image of the ambulance made him think immediately about himself. However, I think this criticism is unwarrented. He notices the ambulance, thinks about what may have happened to the person inside it, and is then distracted by the random associations the image of the ambulance brought up for him. It is not a lack of empathy that led Peter to think about himself when seeing the ambulance, but his recurrent trait of letting physical occurences trigger strong emotions and memories. It is natural that, if Clarissa is constantly in the back of his mind, he should make an excuse to think about her whenever possible -- finding some correlation between a random ambulance in the street and his relationship with her.
In short, Peter is made a fool by the very character traits that make him sympathetic.
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