"There they go, thought Peter Walsh, pausing at the edge of the pavement; and all the exalted statues, Nelson, Gordon, Havelock, the black, the spectacular images of great soldiers stood looking ahead of them, as if they too had made the same renunciation.." (Woolf 51)
The statues in Virginia Woolf's book, Mrs. Dalloway, are in fact not actually black, but rather seen as bronze silhouettes to Peter in Trafalgar Square. Mr. Walsh assumes that the statues, all men of war, are agreeing in the same formal rejection of something. Nelson was mortally wounded whilst in battle, Gordon died during the siege of Khartoum, and Havelock died a miserable death from dysentery, yet they all look 'spectacular' in their frozen poses. Characters in Mrs. Dalloway seem heroic as well if observed from far away, but once their true identities are revealed, none of them are in a position to reject anyone else's ways of life for not being good enough.
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace and, 1925. Print.
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