“The hall of the house was cool as a vault (29).”
A vault is a something cold, dark, and damp like a basement in an old house or an ancient burial chamber. Needless to say, it’s an unhappy place. In this quote, Virginia Woolf is comparing Mrs. Dalloway’s house to a vault, suggesting that the house itself is metaphorically cold, dark, and damp. A vault is also an extremely inclosed area, so perhaps Mrs. Dalloway feels trapped and imprisoned in her own lonely house, just as one might be tapped in a cold vault.
"Vault." The Free Dictionary. Farlex. Web. 28 May 2012. <http://www.thefreedictionary.com/vault>.
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