Kew Gardens

What I noticed most about "Kew Gardens" was Woolf's eagerness to experiment with a vignette form of writing. By this I mean that the story is tied together by the snail, which has the role of connecting the themes and style of the external action to create more of an ambiance or sensation than an actual contiguous plot. Woolf visually expresses this intention at the beginning of the story when she is describing the bouncing light of the scenery. This light is not simply representative of the detached nature of the vignettes, but it also shows how the story flows. That is to say, visually speaking, these lights combine to create a picture that is more intricate and complex than simply their presence alone. For example, Woolf shows red, blue, and yellow lights passing of the petals of the flower bed as she sets the scene. What is important to realize is that these lights are not independent of each other, because their collective presence with the flowers creates an entirely new image as a whole. Basically this comes down to the "greater than the sum of its parts" theory.
While the external plot development in "Kew Gardens" can feel oddly placed at times, each vignette is in fact a carefully designed piece of the picture. The initial conversation between Simon and Elanor gives me the sense that it is an imitation of the plot as a whole. At first Simon is thinking about an old girlfriend, Lily, who once came to the garden with him. The dragonfly is an interesting part of this conversation. Woolf allows us the image of a dragonfly circling a young couple on their first date, but before we come to the conclusion of this scenario, Elanor abruptly starts speaking of her experience with the kiss as a child. It is as if this visual representation of the dragonfly has jumped to Elanor's find, where instead of simply circling the scene, it makes an attack in the form of a kiss. This kiss is what we were waiting for in Simon's story, but instead it is realized in Elanor's.
With this Woolf implements the idea of things jumping around between the various vignettes. While the snail's three encounters in "Kew Gardens" appear unrelated enough, what is common between the three is how we see them. We are constantly bombarded with imagery that suggests the movement of ideas and bouncing back and forth. This is exemplified in its most extreme form with the two women at the end, whose conversation consists of the spewing of random words that may be taken as the high points of energy in the conversation. What Woolf has done here is not create a tangible plot that allows the reader to reflect, but she creates a sort of visual experience with words, that allows the reader to transcend the physical boundaries of the characters and become a part of the surroundings, much in the way the snail acts.