I think Clarissa liked the conventions of social interactions because she was good at them and the formulas that were used to put together a good conversation were a kind of barrier to letting too much emotion creep into public. Clarissa would see the role models she was presented with and want to end up the same way, in a big house with servants to help and a active social life. The path to this picturesque life, as she saw it, consisted of learning how to be a proper young lady and marrying well. The well-mannered Clarissa saw no problem with this idea and a part of her really wanted that life. The other side of Clarissa came to bloom with the cultivation of Peter and Sally. Peter showed Clarissa passion and brought out her pugnacious side as they bickered constantly. Maybe I just see this because I like Peter more than Richard, but I think that Clarissa and Richard never loved the way Clarissa and Peter did. Clarissa and Peter had ups and downs but it seems their relationship was much more charged that her relationship with Richard. Sally showed Clarissa true and pure love and just gave Clarissa a whole new outlook on what was needed to be happy. Sally was daring and dangerous and that scared Clarissa but it also kind of inspired her. Clarissa admired Sally's courage but her initial outlook on life prevented her from adopting or at least adhering more closely to Sally's way of life.
So, enter Richard and the picture begins to change. Clarissa is left with a choice: to choose the safe road she saw herself traveling with Richard, or to choose the danger, risk, and passion associated with choosing Peter. Clarissa chose Richard and she left Peter and Sally for her new, cushy life as a model wife and socialite. I think she chose Richard and what he brought to the table because she thought she wanted the picturesque life of a woman with a man in Parliament more than she wanted the emotion that she had in her relationships with Peter and Sally. Clarissa's thoughts throughout the book make the reader wonder if she believes she made the right choice. She is constantly thinking over days from her youth. As I started the book, I didn't read the memories as regret or anything special but as I got deeper into Clarissa's head, especially as she talked about Sally and when we finally hear Sally talk about Clarissa, it seemed that Clarissa did regret, with maybe only a hidden part of her, leaving Sally and Peter behind.
Leaving Sally and Peter behind almost symbolizes Clarissa leaving her youth behind; they were her best friends and her best memories of the past. I think it's really sad... I think Peter and Sally really cared about her and she chose Richard, not Peter, and a social position, not freedom like Sally. Then, when they come to her party, she doesn't talk to them. They seem pretty ok with it but I was like, "What?! You spend this entire novel thinking about them, then you won't even talk to them?". Again, she ditches them to play hostess.
In Clarissa's defense, because she has these two competing sides, she has all this inner conflict and feelings that are semi-regretful. Clarissa has a lot of emotion, but not towards her current life, towards her past. For example, when she sees Sally and Peter and thinks about their experiences together, she has passionate and emotive but when she talks about her life in the present, she is content, simply content. She feels she chose Richard for the continuous contentment rather than the ups and downs. It's rational so it's hard to say she made the wrong choice.
Overall, I think Clarissa is the same person in the beginning of what we hear about her, to the end with a short detour in the middle lead by her two best friends. No matter how much she thinks about the past or readers wonder why she made the decision the way she did, nothing with change because its just a book. Virginia Woolf wanted it to happen that way but why?
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