Beautiful Passage

"Sally it was who made her feel just how sheltered the life at Bourton was. She knew nothing about sex- nothing about social problems. But Aunt Helena never liked discussions about anything. ... There they sat, hour after hour talking in her bedroom at the top of the house, talking about life, how they were to reform the world." (Woolf 33).

In the passages that first mention Sally, there is a lot of detail. Clarissa remembers how she smoked and ran naked through the halls. She has that spark of personality that allows her to connect with people and open their minds to new ideas. "Cleopatra" by Brian M. Viveros captures what Sally was to Clarissa. The painting is done with oil on canvas and is made so skillfully that it looks like the woman is looking directly at you. Her stare coupled with the head piece of bullets makes her appear to be critical of war. Sally cracks Clarissa's world to see the reality of the world, life and death, happiness and problems. The new reality of the world seems, to Clarissa, like an adventure. 
The red lips and rose are both symbols of femininity and sexual powers, things that Sally possesses that Clarissa has no experience with. Clarissa believes that Sally is worldly enough to teach her about philosophy and literature, the addition of her more intimate experience with Sally can be seen as another lesson of reality.
The woman in the painting is smoking, a habit of Sally's (32). The fighting that occurs in war and in everyday life, is often sever enough to cause people to seek drugs. Sally runs away after she and her parents "quarrel" and may have developed her smoking habit trying to escape from the constant problems at home (33). The habit is noticed by Clarissa and further impresses her.