Mrs. Dalloway

freshness about them; even the poorest dressed better than five years
ago surely; and to his eye the fashions had never been so becoming; the
long black cloaks; the slimness; the elegance; and then the delicious
and apparently universal habit of paint. Every woman, even the most
respectable, had roses blooming under glass; lips cut with a knife;
curls of Indian ink; there was design, art, everywhere; a change of
some sort had undoubtedly taken place. What did the young people think
about? Peter Walsh asked himself.

Those five years--1918 to 1923--had been, he suspected, somehow very
important. People looked different. Newspapers seemed different.
Now for instance there was a man writing quite openly in one of the
respectable weeklies about water-closets. That you couldn’t have
done ten years ago--written quite openly about water-closets in a
respectable weekly. And then this taking out a stick of rouge, or a
powder-puff and making up in public. On board ship coming home there
were lots of young men and girls--Betty and Bertie he remembered in
particular--carrying on quite openly; the old mother sitting and
watching them with her knitting, cool as a cucumber. The girl would