Matters are often beyond Clarissa's control, however. She has tried to order her life by marrying Richard Dalloway, but lately she has been near death, and lately the world has been torn by the Great War. Now both she and the world seem to be healing. The king and queen are in the palace and are giving a party tonight — just as Clarissa will be giving a party tonight. These should be happy moments — and some are — but Clarissa's joys cannot fend off certain unhappy thoughts — the intense feelings of hatred, for instance, that she has for Miss Kilman, her daughter's tutor.
Why Clarissa hates Miss Kilman is not entirely clear but already we can guess at a little: Clarissa was very ill and her daughter Elizabeth represents youth, the essence of aliveness, and the extension of Clarissa. Clarissa has never "possessed" Elizabeth, nor has Richard, but now, to Clarissa, it seems that Miss Kilman is devouring Elizabeth. This concept of owning, that was so odious about Peter's personality, has dangerously reasserted itself just when Mrs. Dalloway is growing old and the world is changing and she becoming a stranger to it.
And so, worrying about Miss Kilman, though delighting in Bond Street, Mrs. Dalloway reaches the flower shop. It has been an unusual walk. This first scene is one of great contrasts — one of active sensual excitement but also of intermittent reflection. Mrs. Dalloway has walked through the noisy streets of London, entered a quiet park, re-emerged into the noise and color, and has slipped into a peaceful, sweet-smelling flower shop. She has thought about the present, about the past, and about the present again. The back-and-forth narrative, and this back-and-forth, in-and-out current of noise and quiet have suggested the rhythm of waves, their ebb and flow. Virginia Woolf is a remarkable architect: Clarissa has already mentioned that the day felt as though it carried the kiss of a wave; she has remembered the rising and falling of the rooks — very much like waves; Big Ben booms out hours one after another, irrevocably — very much like waves; life, she says, builds up, tumbles, then creates afresh — very much like waves. In this scene and throughout the novel the changes of time, the changes of scenes, and the motif of water — the sea and the waves — are all carefully synthesized.
