In this scene in the jewelry shop, while Hugh is being a pompous boor about a piece of Spanish jewelry, we note a difference between Richard Dalloway and Peter Walsh. Peter is a romantic, he follows dreams, and he also follows people (the girl on the street), but he made the girl the object of a playful quest. Richard Dalloway also follows people, but he follows them doggedly. He is not very romantic, in either an adventurous or an amorous sense. His thoughts about a present for Clarissa are tainted with apology and fear. He has never been successful with his gifts to her; he does not dare actually buy jewelry for Clarissa. Instead he chooses flowers. Flowers, of course, are lovely and thoughtful. But only a few pages back, we saw another man offering flowers to a woman: Hugh Whitbread gave them to Lady Bruton: he gave them to his hostess. Now Richard will reject the idea of jewelry and decide on a gift of flowers and present them to Clarissa, another hostess. Virginia Woolf's sense of irony is keen.
Richard chooses flowers because they can be given, and accepted, impersonally. He dares not break a certain silent compact between himself and Clarissa and make any situation too personal. Clarissa did not dare marry Peter Walsh; Richard does not dare buy too personal a present for Clarissa. He is hesitant about daring to really love her, just as she was hesitant about daring to love Peter Walsh. Richard's fear of crossing Piccadilly, while several children nonchalantly scamper across, is indicative of this timidity. He has lost a life in the country by marrying Clarissa; she let herself lose Peter Walsh. Clarissa fled to Richard and has infected him with certain of her fears. He must now observe certain rules of behavior with his wife if he is to preserve their untroubled union. When Virginia Woolf says that Richard carries his flowers "as a weapon" as he crosses the park and approaches the female vagrant, she intends for us to understand that he also carries the flowers as a weapon against saying the unsaid "I love you" to his wife. He is afraid to be natural and impetuous. How paradoxical that flowers — natural and beautiful — should be a substitute and a defense against the natural and beautiful "I love you."
