Are Peter and Richard truly opposites?

As we have been reading Mrs. Dalloway, the characters that I have been most identifying with are Peter and Richard, the two most prominent mentally-healthy male characters we see. That I am most sympathetic to the male characters unsurprising to me, since I almost always identify more with the male figures in books. What is surprising to me is how strongly I sympathize with both Peter and Richard, even though in class we seem to be portraying the two as complete opposites of each other.

When we first get inside the head of Peter, he has just left Clarissa and is somewhat riled up. He starts getting worked up about the tone of voice she used and the phrase of "here is my Elizabeth." I totally get Peter right here, and his justifiable anger at the insincerity and pretentiousness of other people is something I admire him for and sympathize with. On a similar vein, I found my respect for Peter skyrocket when he demands an honest discussion with Clarissa by the fountain about their future together--even if it might be painful--instead of playing the social game with her.

Where I most dig Peter is on page 58, where he is thinking about how he got upset at Clarissa for saying she would;t speak to a woman who got pregnant before being married.  "He hadn't blamed her for minding the fact...but it was her manner that annoyed him; timid; hard; arrogant; unimaginative; prudish." I especially like the use of the word unimaginative. I find myself getting into arguments all the time where I don't actually agree with the point I'm arguing, I just want to get the other person to look at things in a more imaginative way.

Sometimes I think of myself as someone kind of like Peter, a Romantic who thinks interesting and unconventional thoughts that other people don't understand. This causes all kinds of conflict and makes me feel strong emotions, which keep me feeling more alive than some of the more conventional types. But other times, I like to think of myself as someone more like Richard, the solid, dependable man you can trust to keep his head and not overreact to situations. Someone who may not be as outwardly emotional, but is affectionate in his own way and above all practical.

I spent a lot of time on Peter, so I'll be brief on how I identify with Richard. First, I like how he responded to the dog in the trap, instantly being the practical one and setting it free. I liked his humble bearing; he didn't seem caught up with being in Parliament and politics like some (Hugh) seemed to be. I also liked how he enjoyed simple things in life like talking to Clarissa, and they did seem genuinely happy together.

I suppose my point in all this is that the Richard and Peter do not have to be considered complete opposites. They take very different approaches to life, but those approaches do not have to be mutually exclusive, especially since I can appreciate and aspire to both approaches. It seems a bit one-dimensional of us (or even Woolf?) to portray Richard completely as the unemotional conservative one and Peter as the wildly emotional, almost bipolar counterpart. Richard certainly experiences a wide range of emotions, he just has a hard time of explaining them and so he keeps them to himself (we see this with saying "I love you") and keeps busy enough he does't have to think about them. Peter also experiences a wide range of emotions, but he ponders them more and he also doesn't always know how to express them well, so it comes out awkwardly as criticism of others.