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    The World Within Kew Gardens

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    Jennifer Willever Bogansky
    This summary provides the key details about Virginia Woolf's short story "The World Within Kew Gardens": [1] The story follows a snail traversing a flowerbed in Kew Gardens and overhears various couples' conversations as they stroll through the gardens. [2] Each couple reflects on memories from their past, with symbols like a dragonfly representing ideas of freedom and commitment. [3] Woolf uses the garden to represent an escape from reality where visitors find spiritual connections through the natural surroundings.

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    The World Within Kew Gardens

    Uploaded by

    Jennifer Willever Bogansky
    41 views4 pages
    This summary provides the key details about Virginia Woolf's short story "The World Within Kew Gardens": [1] The story follows a snail traversing a flowerbed in Kew Gardens and overhears various couples' conversations as they stroll through the gardens. [2] Each couple reflects on memories from their past, with symbols like a dragonfly representing ideas of freedom and commitment. [3] Woolf uses the garden to represent an escape from reality where visitors find spiritual connections through the natural surroundings.

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    4th Writing Assignments

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    This summary provides the key details about Virginia Woolf's short story "The World Within Kew Gardens": [1] The story follows a snail traversing a flowerbed in Kew Gardens and overhears various couples' conversations as they stroll through the gardens. [2] Each couple reflects on memories from their past, with symbols like a dragonfly representing ideas of freedom and commitment. [3] Woolf uses the garden to represent an escape from reality where visitors find spiritual connections through the natural surroundings.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    41 views4 pages

    The World Within Kew Gardens

    Uploaded by

    Jennifer Willever Bogansky
    This summary provides the key details about Virginia Woolf's short story "The World Within Kew Gardens": [1] The story follows a snail traversing a flowerbed in Kew Gardens and overhears various couples' conversations as they stroll through the gardens. [2] Each couple reflects on memories from their past, with symbols like a dragonfly representing ideas of freedom and commitment. [3] Woolf uses the garden to represent an escape from reality where visitors find spiritual connections through the natural surroundings.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 4

    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.
    Bogansky 2

    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
    Bogansky 3

    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
    Bogansky 4

    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.

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