Chapter 20 Summary

Virginia Woolf has won her battle to move back to London. The possibility of life opens up for her as she thinks of the concert halls, the parties, the city streets. These animating thoughts return her mind to Vanessa's kiss; the kiss contained a similar promise of joy fulfilled. She decides to give Clarissa Dalloway such a moment, such a kiss, in her story. Clarissa will only be allowed to experience that bliss once, and she must survive her entire life on the strength of that one happy memory. Virginia consigns Clarissa to a lonely, grieving life, which Virginia imagines will still somehow be happy for Clarissa, because Clarissa too loves living in London. Virginia conceives the idea of creating a new character, a tortured artist, who will commit suicide instead of Clarissa. Leonard interrupts her train of thought, sternly ordering her to...