Summary:
Adapted from Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Director Stephen Daldry and playwright David Hare, The Hours was inspired by Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway. It is no coincidence that The Hours was the working title Woolf had given Mrs. Dalloway as she was writing it.
Death and re-birth in The Hours
Adapted from Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Director Stephen Daldry and playwright David Hare, The Hours was inspired by Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway. It is no coincidence that The Hours was the working title Woolf had given Mrs. Dalloway as she was writing it. The emotional trauma that this film guides its viewers through becomes evident in the opening prologue. The scene begins with Virginia Woolf composing what would be her suicide notes to her husband Leonard and her sister Vanessa, the two most important people in her life (Curtis, 57.) She begins: "I feel certain that I am going mad again: I feel we can't go through another of these terrible times... You have given me the greatest possible happiness.. ." The portrayal of this process quickly demonstrates the turmoil Woolf is feeling, both from her oncoming episode of "madness" and the difficulty she is having finding the correct words to say "farewell" (Lee, Hermoine). The prologue comes to its climax as Kidman portrays Woolf's suicide. It is a gut-wrenching display of one's "matter-of-fact" acceptance of one's own coming death. Very dramatically, Woolf fills the pockets of her coat with large stones and stoically walks into a swollen river. Her head slowly disappears beneath the muddy water as all hope of her reconsidering her suicide is swept away with the current.
The Hours then introduces us to three women from three different decades, and their relationships with others, tied together by a common thread--Mrs. Dalloway. Mrs. Dalloway is about one day in the life of its namesake, Clarissa Dalloway, as she prepares for a dinner party. "She is a woman who, on the outside, is a perfect hostess, the wife of a politician, but who contains other selves within, and earlier may have had lovers of both sexes" (Ebert). The three main (female) characters in The Hours all relate to the character Mrs. Dalloway in their own unique ways.
We are introduced to a "re-born" Woolf as she begins to write Mrs. Dalloway. In the movie Woolf's character takes the role of the narrator. Although not the narrator in the traditional sense, she does function as the all-knowing mind that binds the other stories together (Miller). It becomes evident quickly that what Woolf writes in her novel has rippling effects through time and into lives of the other two main stories. It is as if Woolf is a puppeteer reaching through time to control the lives of those that read her book. As Woolf wrote the first line in her book, "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself (Woolf, 1)", we saw the effect it had on the other two women decades later. Laura Brown was shown reading the sentence and Clarissa Vaughn told her partner that she "would buy the flowers herself." This fragmentary method used in telling this story mimics the "stream-of-consciousness" technique that is found in many of Woolf's works including Mrs. Dalloway. Woolf strayed from the traditional methods of plot and character development and did not even split Mrs. Dalloway up into chapters. She tended to focus more on the "details of the mind" and less on the "insignificant details of the world" (Miller, Hillis).
Although we only see a small glimpse into Virginia Woolf's life, we are given some important clues as to the reason for her ultimate suicide. We learn that a few years earlier she had a breakdown and on advice of her doctors Leonard moved her out of the hustle and bustle of London and into the quieter suburbs. Woolf felt suffocated and imprisoned by her life in boring Richmond and felt her right to decide where she should live was taken away from her. In fact, during one particularly powerful scene she told her husband "between the suburbs and death, I choose death!" Because of the amount of control others had over her life, perhaps Woolf felt most "normal" when she was writing, thus controlling the lives of her characters.
A particularly symbolic scene was where Woolf fled her house and went to the train station. It was an image of escaping her "prison" or "asylum" by sneaking out of the high-walled yard and running down a dingy alley flanked by eight-foot stone walls. Quite symbolically, we are shown Leonard gardening near a bleeding heart bush as Woolf makes her "escape." This image, coupled with the dialogue between Leonard and Woolf at the train station, show us that although he clearly loved Woolf, he was actually contributing to her feelings of being suffocated and out of control. Despite the thought he may have had the best of intentions, Leonard's comments questioning whether Woolf was truly feeling suffocated or if it was just "the voices again", illustrated a lack of understanding of her mental condition.
Both Woolf and Septimus Smith were victims of this lack of understanding and subsequent poor treatment. Historically, adequate treatment of mental illness had been very poor. As recently as the 19th century the mentally ill where often chained next to hardened criminals in the dungeons of the world's prisons (Foucault, 221). Although the care of the mentally ill had improved somewhat from that early barbaric treatment, the mentally ill during Woolf's time were still treated quite primitively. The mentally ill were moved from prisons to asylums and despite not having bars on the windows they were still not particularly nice places to live. The attitude of the time was to isolate the "insane" from society in order to "protect" each from the other (Foucault, 240 - 244). In Woolf's Richmond, England home, we can draw parallels between it and an asylum. Both were in the "peaceful" suburbs or rural areas, both had gardens surrounded by high walls and the occupants' movements were restricted. Her sister Vannessa doesn't even invite her to a party because Woolf's doctors "forbid" her. Perhaps having Septimus Smith kill himself when he was threatened with institutionalization revealed what Woolf would do should she face the same circumstance.
The most literal example of Woolf reaching forward in time to affect the lives of her readers is demonstrated in the character of Laura Brown. Brown is a stereotypical suburban housewife from the 50's. She has a young son Richie and is pregnant with her second child. She is just beginning to read Woolf's book and like Clarissa Dalloway, has a husband who adores her and both are living in a post-World War era wondering what their lives would be like had they made different choices. At one point, Brown experiments with a different lifestyle by kissing her neighbor very passionately on her lips in the presence of her son. Also like Dalloway, Brown is preparing for a party--a birthday party for her husband. Where Dalloway and Brown differ is that Dalloway is a very accomplished, capable hostess and Brown struggles to make a "simple" cake. There is an exchange between Brown and her neighbor that reveals society's views on what are valuable traits as a woman up until that time (Clark). Basically, they are the ability to have children and keep a nice home--cooking, cleaning, etc... This paranoid sensitivity to other's views is repeated throughout Woolf's works (Apter, 123). Woolf emphasizes this theme in Mrs. Dalloway by having Clarissa Dalloway put so much effort into her public image as a good hostess.
As Brown reads Woolf's novel she decides to check herself into a Victorian-style room in the Normandy hotel to, we are led to believe, commit suicide. Brown appears to take an overdose of pills and lay down to read Mrs. Dalloway as she awaits her endless sleep. We then see weed-strewn, muddy water fill the hotel room and wash over Brown much like the river water consumed Woolf in her suicide scene. We are then transported back to a scene of Woolf struggling with the decision of who she should "kill" in her novel. Originally, Woolf was going to have Dalloway kill herself but changes her mind. At this point we see Brown sit up because she decided not to kill herself.
In the character Clarissa Vaughn, we see the "re-birth" of Woolf, Dalloway and even Woolf's husband Leonard. Her name (Clarissa), she throws a party for Richard, she is taking care of Richard who has mental illness, she is an editor and that Richard calls her "Mrs. Dalloway." Like Dalloway remembering her relationship with Peter, Vaughn considers her happiest days are behind her. She remembers being happy when she was young and thought it was the beginning of her happiness but it turned out to be the only happiness she had. We can easily imagine Vaughn's choice to live in the stimulating environment that is New York City as being influence by Woolf. Richard and Vaughn were lovers in their younger days before each pursued same-sex relationships afterwards. This blurring of heterosexual and homosexual relationships is quite similar to Woolf's different relationships with the men and women of her past (Curtis).
Clarissa Vaughn's Richard is a "re-incarnated" Woolf and Septimus Smith, a World War I veteran who is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress (Shell Shock), from Woolf's novel. Like Smith, Richard hears voices in ancient Greek and his mind is being ravaged by illness. Although their illnesses differ (Richard has end-stage AIDS), no doctor can offer either man a cure. After hearing from Woolf that "the poet will die--
The visionary", Richard commits suicide by hurling himself out of a window after Clarissa arrived to take him to the party she was throwing in his honor. Septimus similarly commits suicide, also by jumping out of a window, when Dr. Holmes arrived to take him to a sanitarium (Woolf, 226). "Most suicides are predicated on the idea of revenge or anger in some way" (Daldry), but the letters Woolf writes before her suicide release everyone else from the responsibility for her death. Richard similarly released Vaughn from the responsibility for his death by saying a line similar to one in Woolf's letter to her husband--"I don't think two people could have been happier than we've been."
Though there are cinematic clues that they are the same person (similar pajamas, and Richard looking at a old photo of a woman with pills spilled on its surface)--It is only after Richard's suicide we learn that he is actually Laura Brown's grown up son Richie. Up until his suicide we are led to believe that Brown had committed suicide. In fact, in Richard's hard-to-read novel, he has his mother as committing suicide. The reality as we learn from her, is that she abandoned Richard and the rest of her family shortly after her second child was born. Much like the loss Woolf experienced when her mother died while Woolf was thirteen, the loss of his mother affected Richard deeply (Curtis).
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