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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is Louis' sad observation?

2. What is disturbing about Virginia kissing Vanessa?

3. What prompts Laura's fury?

4. What does Laura feel herself to be?

5. What do both Clarissa and Louis notice about each other?

Short Essay Questions

1. Over what matters concerning Julia does Clarissa worry?

2. What does Virginia see as a kind of devil?

3. What makes Virginia, at this point, begin to reconsider killing off her character, Mrs. Dalloway?

4. What are some of the ways in which Laura justifies to herself her trip to the hotel just in order to read?

5. What gives Laura the feeling that she has actually succeeded in achieving a kind of perfection?

6. What are Laura's rather bitter hopes about heaven?

7. What does Louis think of Clarissa?

8. Why does Walter want to buy his young partner a present?

9. Why is suicide not an option for Laura?

10. What is ironic about Richard's apartment being open to the light?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How can knowledge of the context in which literature was composed deepen a reader's appreciation of the text? In your answer, refer closely to The Hours by Michael Cunningham, but you might expand your response by including reference to an additional text.

Essay Topic 2

'Cunningham's The Hours is unremittingly depressing.' Do you agree? Is the view of life he presents a gloomy one? Refer closely to the text.

Essay Topic 3

There are numerous interpersonal tensions running through all sections of Michael Cunningham's The Hours. Discuss two of these interpersonal tensions. Are they resolved during the novel? How do they affect the characters who are involved? How are these tensions associated with the themes and/or symbols that are important in the novel?

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