Fifty-two, upper-class, a hostess by vocation. She chose Richard's steadiness over Peter's passion, and the choice has been both correct and costly. Her social world is elegant and hollow; her interior world is philosophical and fearless. She is not Woolf's self-portrait but she contains Woolf's questions: how do you preserve the privacy of the soul while giving yourself to a social role? What is the value of beauty and gathering? Is a party a trivial act or an act of creation? The novel refuses to answer definitively — and so does Clarissa.