“There was a certain dignity about her. She was not worldly, like Clarissa; not rich, like Clarissa. Was he respectable, he wondered as he moved? Witty, with the trembling tongue of a lizard, he thought (because you have to invent, you have to allow yourself a little diversion)... He continued; it has changed. There was color in his cheeks; mockery in his eyes” (Woolf 53). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayAs William Shakespeare wrote in his play Julius Caesar, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." Many play fate or look to a higher being when a relationship falls apart; it takes intuition and awareness to realize that you are responsible for these problems. Peter Walsh returns from India in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, insisting that he no longer loves Clarissa Dalloway. However, he spends the entire trip brooding over their relationship. While it is easy for Peter to blame Clarissa's superficial nature for the breakup, he must realize that she is not alone to blame for her marriage to another man. Peter projects his fantasies onto the woman he meets and follows on the streets of London. The supposed qualities that Peter bestows on the woman are drawn from characteristics both missing and present in Clarissa, thus creating an ideal woman. “There was a certain dignity about her. She was not worldly, like Clarissa; not rich, like Clarissa. Was he respectable, he wondered as he moved? (Wolf 53). The author leaves a mystery as to the denotation of these words; it is purposely left ambiguous whether Peter admires Clarissa's wealth and worldliness. Using the parallel structure, it is clear that Peter has created an organized “checklist” of qualities that the woman he envisions must or must not have. The word mundane means “of or belonging to the world of human existence (as distinct from the next world or other world); relating or connected to human life on earth; earthly, worldly” (Oxford English Dictionary), a definition that contains a double meaning; the woman hasn't traveled much, but she also has no connection to humans, meaning she's not realistic. Peter must accept that everyone has flaws, including Clarissa. “That was the evil part of her: this coldness, this hardness, something very deep in her, which he had felt again that morning when talking to her; an impenetrability. Yet heaven knows he loved her” (Woolf 60-61). Perhaps the root of Peter's fantasy womanhood is that he was not in control when he was in love with Clarissa; he loved her despite her problems, now he daydreams about a woman who is ideally nothing like her. Although reflections on Peter's past are used throughout the novel, there is a constant disconnect between reality and imagination, discrediting Peter's account of his past. “Why go back to the past like this? I think. Why make him think again? Why make him suffer, when she had tortured him so hellishly? Why?" (Woolf 79) It is obvious that Peter is still heartbroken over his breakup with Clarissa, despite stating numerous times during the present that he no longer loves her. Much of the plot is caught somewhere between reality and imagination, as Peter claims to be over her, but can't get her out of his mind. The description of the woman becomes more artistic and symbolic, the conclusions coming more ambiguously as the passage continues: “There was color in her cheeks; mockery in her eyes” (Woolf 53). Indeed, Peter turns his attention to the woman after she passes the statue of Gordon. until she became just the woman he had always had in mind; yet majestic;.