Peter's Pocketknife Phallus

Peter's pocketknife is one of the odder things about him. It seems that whenever he's unsure about a social interaction he pulls it out as a plaything. But noticeably, the times when Peter touches his pocketknife are when he's around women.

One of the first experiences we get of Peter is when he arrives unannounced at Clarissa's house. Almost immediately after sitting down with her, he "[takes] out a large pocket-knife and half [opens] the blade" (39). In all honesty, my first thought with this was "is that knife a phallic symbol?" This thought lingered in the back of my mind throughout reading Mrs. Dalloway. As the book progressed, I found more and more that it just somehow made sense for the knife to be symbolic of Peter's phallus. 

The pocketknife is performing a sort of double symbolism in Mrs. Dalloway. It not only represents a phallus, but it also represents Peter's attraction to many women (and in some cases, his love for a woman). It's a fairly easy assessment that Peter is still at least somewhat in love with Clarissa, and has been since their youth. The thought that goes through Clarissa's head when he pulls out the pocketknife is "That's so like him," indicating this has been a habit of his since he was young and in love with her (40). Peter plays with the pocketknife until he goes on a train of thought about how Clarissa is married to Richard and leading a far more boring life than the life she would have had with him, and then he "[shuts] his knife with a snap" (40). His reaction to these thoughts is to shut down his feelings of love (i.e. the emergence of the pocketknife) because he's jealous and generally bitter over Clarissa's marriage to Richard. But when he's simply thinking about the nice qualities of Clarissa that he loves, he plays with his pocketknife. 

A more disturbing instance of Peter touching his pocketknife occurs when he finds an attractive woman in London. After leaving Clarissa's house, he spots a young woman who he eventually determines is calling to him and wouldn't reject him asking her out. As soon as he sees her, he "stealthily [fingers] his pocket-knife" and begins to follow her (51). In this case, Peter's feelings for this woman are entirely attraction based. He is purely focused on her appeal to him, and his stalking of the woman for a short period is actually slightly disturbing. It only becomes more disturbing when the pocketknife attraction symbol is taken into account. He doesn't fully pull the pocketknife out though, which I think could be somewhat indicative of his intents. With Clarissa, he seems to want to show her that he loves her. But he recognizes that this random woman is just that -- a woman he'll see once in his life and not care about again. His feelings of attraction, while present, aren't anything worth pursuing, and so he only fingers his pocketknife instead of playing with it.

I'll admit that this phallic symbol is not necessarily the most obvious conclusion for Peter's pocketknife habits. But the more I've thought about, the further it reaches into revealing more about his feelings and attractions towards women in Mrs. Dalloway.