Jennifer Bogansky

EN115
4th Writing Assignment
September 28, 2010

The World within Kew Gardens

Throughout this story Woolf leads us the reader through the

progression of the snail as well as the conversations of the couples that are passing

by the oval shaped flowerbed. One distinction that is clearly made throughout this

story is the difference between the two worlds, the world of the people wandering

around Kew Gardens and the world of the snail that lives in the oval shaped

flowerbed within the garden. The snail acts like a microphone that is placed within

the gardens to record the conversations of the passing couples. Woolf ‘s world that

she brings about through this story is the meaning of the hidden nature of life.

The snail throughout the story has an apparent goal it is trying to reach.

Where each of the couples that wonder though the gardens have no goal in mind but

to relax and take in the sights or possibly to remember the past. Woolf says “this

one couple after another with much the same irregular and aimless movement

passed the flower-bed.” (Woolf 823) Through each conversation of the passing

couples in the garden, the narrator returns to the snail to let us know the progress

that it has made toward reaching its goal. The snail is not like the people who visit

the gardens, on the other hand it has “a definite goal in front of it,” and though it has

many obstacles to overcome the snail is determined. (Woolf 821) The snail

represents the fact the all the people who visit the gardens have their own

challenges to face.
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The garden itself takes on a greater meaning than just of place of flowers,

plants, and insects. The garden itself represents something symbolic to all the

couples that visit it, whether it would be a past memory, a vision they see for the

future, or even a voice that come to them when they are visiting the gardens. When

the people come to visit the gardens they feel as though it is a way to escape

everyday life. The flowers and the plants bring a certain calm to the people who

visit the gardens, this is a way that Woolf used symbolism to show the way the

nature of the garden brings change to their lives.

For each couple that passes the oval flowerbed within the garden they are

filled with the reflection of a memory. If we take Simon, he talks about his first love

Lilly. He brought her to the garden to proposed to her and he remembers how she

was nervously tapping her shoe as he proposed. Knowing at this point that she

would say no, he sees a dragonfly flying around them. Hoping that the dragonfly

would land would hopefully change the mind of Lilly and that she would say yes to

him. The dragonfly kept flying around and never settled. Woolf used this symbolic

reference to let us know that Lilly was not ready to be tied down and wanted to

remain free. Simon then asked his wife if she minded him talking about the past.

Eleanor reassured Simon that everyone thinks about their past, including her own.

Another use of symbolism by Woolf to show us that the people who visit the garden

are reminders of her past loves, that she too has a past apart from Simon’s.

We also see an elderly man visit the garden as a way to relax him. William is

a lonely old man who is looking for a companion. He finds himself chasing a woman

throughout the gardens that he feels he must speak to her. The flowers are used to
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distract the woman. Williams feels that the flowers are talking to him; the spirits he

hears are speaking to him through the flowers. Here we see how nature is meant to

relax and connect people to their spiritual side. The same goes for the two elderly

women the visit the gardens. They were just excited to have been able to visit such

a place, since they come from a lower class of people they don’t get to visit as often.

While one of the woman is talking the other woman says that she is “seeing a brass

candlestick reflecting in the light in an unfamiliar way.” (Woolf 822) This woman

assumes that she is seeing things; she closes her eyes and reopens them again. She

is a bit upset, for she is not quite sure what is happening. She decides to take a seat

and drink her tea. This hallucination is just like that of William’s spirits talking to

him through the flowers. The images that Woolf portrays through these characters

represent a connection to the spiritual life.

With the last couple that visits the gardens we can tell of the attraction

between the two. “The fact that his hand rested on the top of hers expressed their

feelings in a strange way.” (Woolf 823) This continues as they walk throughout the

gardens. The young man asks Trissie to come and sit so they can have some tea, but

she tells the young man no and that she wants to continue to explore the gardens.

She wants to explore the gardens for everything that it has. We see the connection

back to Simon and Lilly’s story, being that this is the last story within the garden and

Simon’s was the first. Woolf gives us the reader that the garden’s result has come

around to a full circle.

The world that Woolf has created in this story is one how nature can

represent and touch upon are many different facets in life. To leave your worries at
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the door and to enter the garden with a free mind and letting nature calm your

senses. Woolf makes the connection to her final thought of the garden when in the

last paragraph she makes the reference to the murmur of the outside city. She says,

“the voices cried aloud and the petals of myriads of flowers flashed their own

colours into the air.” (Woolf 824) Here we see her comparing the city outside to

the voices that are trapped within the gardens that cry out as the flower petals fly

through the air revealing a splash of their color. Each of the petals that are soaring

through the air symbolizes all of the episodes that have been professed by all of the

people who have visited the Kew Gardens.