One thing that intrigued me in Mrs. Dalloway was Peter’s habit of playing with his pocket knife, especially when he is uncomfortable, excited, or generally feeling strong emotions. I was puzzled as to why playing with a knife became his fidgeting habit, and I wondered if, although it seems slightly threatening to us, the practice was more accepted in 1920’s England. From this quote, it appears that people view it as a strange habit but not inherently menacing, as we would see it today: “That was his old trick, opening a pocket-knife, thought Sally, always opening and shutting a knife when he got excited.”
While the knife is not considered menacing, taking it out is seen to be extremely strange, as mentioned by Clarissa: “and he took out his knife quite openly… and clenched his fist upon it. What an extraordinary habit that was, Clarissa thought; always playing with a knife. Always making one feel, too, frivolous; empty-minded; a mere silly chatterbox, as he used. For Heaven’s sake, leave your knife alone! she cried to herself in irrepressible irritation; it was his silly unconventionality, his weakness; his lack of the ghost of a notion what any one else was feeling that annoyed her…” It appears that Peter’s knife fiddling is a physical representation of his social failures or mistakes, the grandest example being Clarissa’s rejection of his marriage proposal. Peter’s habit is linked to when he is feeling strong emotions, which is often, and it appears that their strength is off-putting to those around him. These emotions also, in the opinions of the day, undermined his masculinity – men were not supposed to cry as he did, when Clarissa rejected him. Maybe, in Peter’s eyes, his knife fiddling is not a social weakness, but an attempt to reclaim his masculinity. And yet, I wonder why Woolf, who critiques the ideals of masculinity through Septimus, chose to have Peter “fail” in his life because he does not fit the ideal with his excessive emotions?
