The Fruit Basket
Rose arranges a fruit basket for her mother’s dinner party
that serves to draw the partygoers out of their private suffering
and unite them. Although Augustus Carmichael and Mrs. Ramsay appreciate the
arrangement differently—he rips a bloom from it; she refuses to disturb
it—the pair is brought harmoniously, if briefly, together. The basket
testifies both to the “frozen” quality of beauty that Lily describes
and to beauty’s seductive and soothing quality.
