Loneliness and Alienation

Each human character in the story seems lost in his or her own reminiscences. Despite walking with someone in Kew Gardens, the narrator emphasizes ways in which their thoughts are their own. Some of the characters are merely alone with their thoughts, like the first couple who remember by themselves and then talk with each other about their memories. Other characters, like William and the "ponderous woman," seem lonely. They walk with a companion who does not seem to notice them. In the end, the man and the "ponderous woman" are perhaps not merely lonely but alienated from those around them. The old man's strange behavior seems to keep him locked into a world all his own, unable to connect with anyone around him.

By making a garden the focal point of this rumination on ideas of aloneness, loneliness, and alienation, Woolf evokes the biblical image...