Writers often use description to create a mood or establish a theme. What theme does Woolf establish in the opening paragraph?
A. The peaceful aspects of nature form a stark contrast to the frenzied busyness of modern reality.

B. The unique but temporary beauty of individual moments affects people's perceptions.

C.Gardens are important places for people to gather.

About the Author

Born Adeline Virginia Stephen in London in 1882, Virginia Woolf was the daughter of editor and scholar Sir Leslie Stephen. At that time, universities excluded women; Woolf was educated at home. She married journalist Leonard Woolf in 1912. Together they helped form the influential literary circle, the Bloomsbury group. They also began their own small printing company, the Hogarth Press. Woolf was an important member of the literary movement known as modernism. She published several influential books, short stories, and essays. She is perhaps best known for a literary technique called stream of consciousness. With this technique, the thoughts and feelings of her characters take primacy over behavior or events. Woolf's works express the fluid passage of time, heightening the importance of each individual fleeting moment. Woolf's works penetrate the surface of reality to reveal the psychological aspects of her characters' lives.
From the oval-shaped flowerbed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks spreading into heart-shaped or tongue-shaped leaves half way up and unfurling at the tip red or blue or yellow petals marked with spots of color raised upon the surface. From the red, blue, or yellow gloom of the throat emerged a straight bar, rough with gold dust and slightly clubbed at the end. The petals were voluminous enough to be stirred by the summer breeze. When they moved, the red, blue, and yellow lights passed one over the other, staining an inch of the brown earth beneath with a spot of the most intricate color. The light fell either upon the smooth gray back of a pebble, or the shell of a snail with its brown circular veins; or, falling into a raindrop, it expanded the thin walls of water with such intensity of red, blue, and yellow that one expected them to burst and disappear. Instead, the drop was left in a second silver gray once more, and the light now settled upon the flesh of a leaf, revealing the branching thread of fiber beneath the surface. Again it moved on and spread its illumination in the vast green spaces beneath the dome of the heart-shaped and tongue-shaped leaves. Then the breeze stirred rather more briskly overhead and the color was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the men and women who walk in Kew Gardens in July.

The figures of these men and women straggled past the flowerbed with a curiously irregular movement not unlike that of the white and blue butterflies who crossed the turf in zigzag flights from bed to bed. The man was about six inches in front of the woman, strolling carelessly, while she bore on with greater purpose. Every now and then she turned her head to see that the children were not too far behind. The man kept this distance in front of the woman purposely, though perhaps unconsciously, for he wanted to go on with his thoughts.

"Fifteen years ago I came here with Lily," he thought. "We sat somewhere over there by a lake, and I begged her to marry me all through the hot afternoon. How the dragonfly kept circling round us: how clearly I see the dragonfly and her shoe with the square silver buckle at the toe. All the time I spoke I saw her shoe and when it moved impatiently I knew without looking up what she was going to say: the whole of her seemed to be in her shoe. And my love, my desire, were in the dragonfly; for some reason I thought that if it settled there, on that leaf, the broad one with the red flower in the middle of it, if the dragonfly settled on the leaf she would say "Yes" at once. But the dragonfly went round and
round: it never settled anywhere—of course not, happily not, or I shouldn't be walking here with Eleanor and the children—Tell me, Eleanor, d'you ever think of the past?"

Adapted from Virginia Woolf's "Kew Gardens," 1921.

Question

Writers often use description to create a mood or establish a theme. What theme does Woolf establish in the opening paragraph?
A. The peaceful aspects of nature form a stark contrast to the frenzied busyness of modern reality.

B. The unique but temporary beauty of individual moments affects people's perceptions.

C.Gardens are important places for people to gather.

About the Author

Born Adeline Virginia Stephen in London in 1882, Virginia Woolf was the daughter of editor and scholar Sir Leslie Stephen. At that time, universities excluded women; Woolf was educated at home. She married journalist Leonard Woolf in 1912. Together they helped form the influential literary circle, the Bloomsbury group. They also began their own small printing company, the Hogarth Press. Woolf was an important member of the literary movement known as modernism. She published several influential books, short stories, and essays. She is perhaps best known for a literary technique called stream of consciousness. With this technique, the thoughts and feelings of her characters take primacy over behavior or events. Woolf's works express the fluid passage of time, heightening the importance of each individual fleeting moment. Woolf's works penetrate the surface of reality to reveal the psychological aspects of her characters' lives.
From the oval-shaped flowerbed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks spreading into heart-shaped or tongue-shaped leaves half way up and unfurling at the tip red or blue or yellow petals marked with spots of color raised upon the surface. From the red, blue, or yellow gloom of the throat emerged a straight bar, rough with gold dust and slightly clubbed at the end. The petals were voluminous enough to be stirred by the summer breeze. When they moved, the red, blue, and yellow lights passed one over the other, staining an inch of the brown earth beneath with a spot of the most intricate color. The light fell either upon the smooth gray back of a pebble, or the shell of a snail with its brown circular veins; or, falling into a raindrop, it expanded the thin walls of water with such intensity of red, blue, and yellow that one expected them to burst and disappear. Instead, the drop was left in a second silver gray once more, and the light now settled upon the flesh of a leaf, revealing the branching thread of fiber beneath the surface. Again it moved on and spread its illumination in the vast green spaces beneath the dome of the heart-shaped and tongue-shaped leaves. Then the breeze stirred rather more briskly overhead and the color was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the men and women who walk in Kew Gardens in July.

The figures of these men and women straggled past the flowerbed with a curiously irregular movement not unlike that of the white and blue butterflies who crossed the turf in zigzag flights from bed to bed. The man was about six inches in front of the woman, strolling carelessly, while she bore on with greater purpose. Every now and then she turned her head to see that the children were not too far behind. The man kept this distance in front of the woman purposely, though perhaps unconsciously, for he wanted to go on with his thoughts.

"Fifteen years ago I came here with Lily," he thought. "We sat somewhere over there by a lake, and I begged her to marry me all through the hot afternoon. How the dragonfly kept circling round us: how clearly I see the dragonfly and her shoe with the square silver buckle at the toe. All the time I spoke I saw her shoe and when it moved impatiently I knew without looking up what she was going to say: the whole of her seemed to be in her shoe. And my love, my desire, were in the dragonfly; for some reason I thought that if it settled there, on that leaf, the broad one with the red flower in the middle of it, if the dragonfly settled on the leaf she would say "Yes" at once. But the dragonfly went round and 
round: it never settled anywhere—of course not, happily not, or I shouldn't be walking here with Eleanor and the children—Tell me, Eleanor, d'you ever think of the past?"

Adapted from Virginia Woolf's "Kew Gardens," 1921.