"As a child...like a hyacinth...which has had no sun" (123).
A hyacinth is type of flower which symbolizes sport or play. It can represent sincerity or constancy. Virginia Woolf includes this beautiful plant into her writing when she describes Elizabeth from her mother, Clarissa's point of view. Woolf compares Elizabeth to a hyacinth in the respect that she was once a child filled with laughter and merriment, but now she has turned so serious and withdrawn. A hyacinth stands for stability and unchanging; which is now how Elizabeth behaves at her young age of seventeen. Woolf includes this allusion that Elizabeth is "like a hyacinth which has had no sun" so that the reader grasps the concept that she has lost her spark she used to have and now seems to be dying. Elizabeth is no longer a kid and Virginia Woolf may have been expressing a repeated theme of realization through her writing. Woolf grasps the understanding that reality takes away youth, which is what has happened with Elizabeth.
"Hyacinth." Teleflora. 27 September 2009. 2009.
http://www.teleflora.com/about-flowers/hyacinth.asp
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nicely articulated
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