The Hours (novel)

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The Hours

Author	Michael Cunningham
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Released	11 November, 1998
Media Type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	230 pp (First Edition Hardcover)
ISBN	ISBN 0-374-17289-7

The Hours is a novel written by Michael Cunningham. It won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and was later made into an Oscar winning 2002 movie of the same name starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore.

Contents 1 Plot introduction 2 Plot summary 2.1 Prologue 2.2 Mrs. Dalloway 2.3 Mrs. Woolf 2.4 Mrs. Brown 2.5 Mrs. Dalloway 2.6 Mrs. Woolf 2.7 Mrs. Brown 2.8 Mrs. Woolf 2.9 Mrs. Dalloway 3 Characters in "The Hours" 4 Major themes 4.1 LGBT Issues 4.2 Mental Illness 4.3 Literary Themes in The Hours 5 Quotes 6 Trivia 7 Notes

[edit] Plot introduction

The book concerns three generations of women affected by a Virginia Woolf novel.

The first is Woolf herself writing Mrs. Dalloway in 1923 and struggling with her own mental illness. The second is Mrs. Brown, wife of a World War II veteran, who is reading Mrs. Dalloway in 1949 as she plans her husband's birthday party. The third is Clarissa Vaughn, a lesbian, who plans a party in the 1990s to celebrate a major literary award received by her good friend and former lover, the poet Richard, who is dying of AIDS.

The situations of all three characters mirror situations experienced by Woolf's Clarissa Dalloway in 'Mrs. Dalloway', with Clarissa Vaughn being a very literal modern-day version of Woolf's character. Like Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Vaughn goes on a journey to buy flowers while reflecting on the minutiae of the day around her and later prepares to throw a party. Clarissa Dalloway and Clarissa Vaughn also both reflect on their histories and past loves in relation to their current lives, which they both perceive as trivial. A number of other characters in Clarissa Vaughn's story also parallel characters in Woolf's 'Mrs. Dalloway.'

Cunningham's novel also mirrors 'Mrs. Dalloway's' stream-of-consciousness narrative style (a style pioneered by the likes of Woolf and James Joyce) in which the flowing thoughts and perceptions of protagonists are depicted as they would occur in real life, unfiltered, flitting from one thing to another, and often rather unpredictable. In terms of time, this means characters interact not only with the moment in the time in which they are living, but also shoot back to the past in their memories, and in so doing create a depth of history and backstory which weighs upon their present moments, which otherwise might appear quite trivial; buying flowers, baking a cake and such things.

Cunningham's novel also uses the device in Woolf's 'Mrs. Dalloway' of placing the action of the novel within the space of one day. In Woolf's 'Mrs. Dalloway' it is one day in the life of the central character Clarissa Dalloway. In Cunningham's book it is one day in the life of each of the three central characters; Clarissa Vaughn, Laura Brown and Virginia Woolf herself. Through this prism, Cunningham attempts, as did Woolf, to show the beauty and profundity of every day -even the most ordinary- in every person's life and conversely how a person's whole life can be examined through the prism of one single day.

[edit] Plot summary

Note: With the stream-of-consciousness style being so prominent in this work, a summary of the plot based on physical action does not give a thorough understanding of the content of the work. In the novel, action occurring in the physical world (ie: characters doing things, such as talking, walking etc.) is far outweighed by material existing in the thought and memory of the protagonists. Some discretion must be made in a plot summary as to which of these thoughts and memories warrant detailing.

[edit] Prologue

The novel begins with the suicide of Virginia Woolf in 1941 by drowning herself in the Ouse, a river in Sussex, England. Even as she is drowning Virginia marvels at everyday sights and sounds. Leonard Woolf, her husband, finds her suicide note and Virginia's dead body floats downstream where life, in the form of a mother and child going for a walk, goes on as if Virginia is still taking in all the sights and sounds.

• I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

-- from Virginia Woolf's suicide note to Leonard Woolf. p7, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

[edit] Mrs. Dalloway

The novel jumps to New York City at the end of the twentieth century where Clarissa Vaughn (Cunningham's modern Mrs. Dalloway) is thinking about buying flowers. She leaves her partner Sally cleaning their apartment and heads outside into a June morning. Walking to the flower shop, Clarissa enjoys the everyday hustle and bustle of the city. The sights and sounds she encounters serve as jumping-off points for her thoughts about life, her loves and her past. The beautiful day reminds her of a happy memory, a holiday she had as a young woman with two friends, Richard and Louis. In fact, the flowers are for a party Clarissa is hosting at her apartment that night for Richard (now a renowned poet dying of AIDS) as he has just won the Carrouthers, an esteemed poetry prize awarded for a life's work. Clarissa bumps into Walter, an acquaintance who writes pulp fiction gay romances. Clarissa invites him to the party although she knows Richard abhors Walter's shallow interests in "fame and fashions, the latest restaurant". Clarissa herself appreciates Walter's "greedy innocence."^[1] Clarissa continues on her way reflecting on her past, sometimes difficult relationship with Richard which she compares to her more stable but unspectacular relationship with her partner of eighteen years, Sally. She finally arrives at the flower shop.

• What a thrill, what a shock, to be alive on a morning in June, prosperous, almost scandalously privileged, with a simple errand to run.

-- Clarissa reflecting on the day as she walks to the flower shop. p10, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

• Why doesn't she feel more somber about Richard's perversely simultaneous good fortune ("an anguished, prophetic voice in American letters") and his decline ("You have no T-cells at all, none that we can detect")? What is wrong with her? She loves Richard, she thinks of him constantly, but she perhaps loves the day slightly more.

-- Clarissa thinking about Richard. p11, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

• The woman's head quickly withdraws, the door to the trailer closes again, but she leaves behind her an unimstakable sense of watchful remonstrance, as if an angel had briefly touched the surface of the world with one sandaled foot, asked if there was any trouble and, being told all was well, had resumed her place in the ether with skeptical gravity, having reminded the children of earth that they are just barely trusted to manage their own business, and that further carelessness will not go unremarked.

-- Clarissa spotting a movie star sticking her head outside her trailer door in response to a film crew's noisiness. p27, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

[edit] Mrs. Woolf

The novel then jumps to 1923 with Virginia Woolf waking one morning with the possible first line of a new novel. She carefully navigates her way through the morning, so as not to lose her inspiration. When she picks up her pen, she writes: Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

[edit] Mrs. Brown

The novel jumps to 1949 Los Angeles with Laura Brown reading the first line of Virginia's Woolf's novel 'Mrs. Dalloway.' ("Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.") Laura Brown is pregnant with her second child and is reading in bed. She does not want to get up despite it being her husband, Dan's, birthday. She is finding it hard playing the role of wife to Dan, and mother to her son Richie, despite her appreciation for them. She would much rather read her book. She eventually forces herself to go downstairs where she decides to make a cake for Dan's birthday which Richie will help her make.

• He makes her think sometimes of a mouse singing amorous ballads under the window of a giantess.

-- Laura reflecting on her son's transparent love for her. p44, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

• ...the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.

-- Laura remembering a quote from Woolf's 'Mrs. Dalloway.' p48, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

[edit] Mrs. Dalloway

The novel returns to Clarissa Vaughn who, having left the flower shop with an armload of flowers, decides to stop by Richard's apartment. On her way to Richard's she pauses at the site of a film shoot, hoping to catch a glimpse of a movie star. Eventually she leaves, having not seen the star, embarrassed at her own trivial impulses. Clarissa enters the neighbourhood she and Richard frequented as young adults. It is revealed Richard and Clarissa once had a failed experimental romantic relationship together despite it being obvious Richard's "deepest longings" were for Louis with whom he was already in a relationship. Clarissa still wonders what her life might have been if they had tried to stay together. Clarissa enters Richard's apartment building, which she finds squalid. She seems to associate Richard's apartment building with sense of decay and death. She enters Richard's apartment.

Richard welcomes Clarissa, calling her "Mrs. D" a reference to 'Mrs. Dalloway'. He calls her this because of the shared first name (Clarissa Vaughn, Clarissa Dalloway) but also because of a sense of shared destiny. As Richard's closest friend, Clarissa has taken on the role of a caregiver through Richard's illness.

Richard is struggling with what appears to Clarissa to be mental illness, brought about by his AIDS and discusses hearing voices with Clarissa. While Clarissa still enjoys everyday life, it seems Richard's illness has sapped his energy for life and the cleanliness of his apartment is subsequently suffering.

As Clarissa fusses about, paying attention to the details of Richard's life that he has neglected, Richard seems resigned. He does not seem to be looking forward to the party Clarissa is organising for him nearly as much as Clarissa is. Finally, Clarissa leaves promising to return in the afternoon to help him prepare for the party.

[edit] Mrs. Woolf

Meanwhile, two hours have passed since Virginia began writing the start of 'Mrs. Dalloway.' Reflecting on the uncertainty of the artistic process, she decides she has written enough for the day and is worried that if she continues her fragile mental state will become unbalanced; the onset of which she describes as her "headache." Virginia goes to the printing room (her husband Leonard has set up a printing press, the renowned Hogarth Press which first published Sigmund Freud in English and poet T. S. Eliot) where Leonard and an assistant, Ralph are at work. She senses from Raph's demeanour the "impossibly demanding" Leonard has just scolded him for some inefficiency. Virginia announces she is going for a walk and will then pitch in with the work.

• She might see it while walking with Leonard in the square, a scintillating silver-white mass floating over the cobblestones, randomly spiked, fluid but whole, like a jellyfish. "What's that?" Leonard would ask. "It's my headache," she'd answer. "Please ignore it."

--Virginia reflecting on the detached nature of her mental illness. p70, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

• She decides, with misgivings, that she is finished for today. Always, there are these doubts. Should she try another hour? Is she being judicious, or slothful? Judicious, she tells herself, and almost believes it.

--Virginia. p72, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

• The truth, she thinks, sits calmly and plumply, dressed in matronly gray, between these two men.

-Virginia reflecting on whose attitude towards work, the carefree Ralph's, or the "brilliant and indefatigable" Leonard's, has resulted in the two men's conflict. p73, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

[edit] Mrs. Brown

In parallel imagery to Virginia Woolf's, Laura Brown also goes about an act of creation: making Dan's birthday cake. Richie is helping her, and Laura passes through emotions of intense love for, and annoyance with Richie. Laura wants desperately to desire nothing more than the life she has as a wife and mother, to be making a cake, and sees both the cake-making and her present lot in life as her art, just as writing is Virginia Woolf's art.

• She will not lose hope. She will not mourn her lost possibilites, her unexplored talents (what if she has no talents, after all?). She will remain devoted to her son, her husband, her home and duties, all her gifts. She will want this second child.

-Laura's thoughts, the final sentences of the chapter. p79, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

[edit] Mrs. Woolf

Virginia Woolf is taking her walk while thinking of ideas for her novel. She already believes Clarissa Dalloway will commit suicide, now Virginia plans for Mrs.Dalloway to have had one true love: not her husband, but a girl Clarissa knew during her own girlhood. Her love of another girl will have represented a time when she was not afraid to go against the destiny laid out for her by society and family. Virginia plans for Clarissa to kill herself in middle-age over something quite trivial, a representation of what her life has become and what has been repressed. As Virginia walks about Richmond she reflects on how Mrs.Dalloway's deterioration in middle-age represents how Virginia feels about being trapped in suburban Richmond when she only feels fully alive in London. She is aware she is more susceptible to mental illness in London, but would rather die 'raving mad' in London than avoid life (and perhaps prolong her years) in Richmond.

As Virginia returns home she feels, as did Laura Brown in the previous chapter, as if she is impersonating herself, as if the person she is presenting herself to be requires artifice. She puts on this 'act' to convince herself and others that she is 'sane' and so Leonard will agree with the idea of moving back to London. Virginia understands that there is "true art" in the requirement for women such as herself to act as they do. Feeling in control of her 'act' she goes to speak to the cook, Nelly, about lunch. However, Nelly, with her petty grievances and implicit demands that the daily life of running the house which is Virginia's domain, be observed, overwhelms Virginia. Nelly appears to have a matronly competence whilst Virginia does not seem to have a house-wifey bone in her body. Virginia decides to give her character, Clarissa Dalloway, the great skill with servants that she Virginia, does not have.

• She is the author; Leonard, Nelly, Ralph, and the others are the readers. This particular novel concerns a serene, intelligent woman of painfully susceptible sensibilities who once was ill but has now recovered; who is preparing for the season in London...

--Virginia Woolf preparing to 'act' as Virginia Woolf. p83, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

• Men may congratulate themselves for writing truly and passionately about the movements of nations; they may consider war and the search for God to be great literature's only subjects; but if men's standing in the world could be toppled by an ill-advised choice of hat, English literature would be dramatically changed.

--p83-4, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

• The trick will be to render intact the magnitude of Clarissa's miniature but very real desperation; to fully convince the reader that, for her, domestic defeats are every bit as devastating as are lost battles to a general.

--Virginia considering how she will write 'Mrs.Dalloway. p84, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

• "I've got the cress soup," Nelly says. "And the pie. And then I thought just some of them yellow pears for pudding, unless you'd like something fancier." Here it is, then: the challenge thrown down. Unless you'd like something fancier. So the subjugated Amazon stands on the riverbank wrapped in the fur of animals she has killed and skinned; so she drops a pear before the queen's gold slippers and says, "Here is what I've brought. Unless you'd like something fancier."

--p85, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

• ...in offering pears she reminds Virginia that she, Nelly, is powerful; that she knows secrets; that queens who care more about solving puzzles in their chambers than they do about the welfare of their people must take whatever they get.

--p85, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

[edit] Mrs. Dalloway

Having walked back home from Richard's, Clarissa Vaughn enters her apartment. Her partner Sally, a TV producer, is on her way out the door to a lunch meeting with a film star. Suddenly, left alone, Clarissa feels unmoored. She feels as if her home and its comforts are trivial in light of the impending death of her closest friend Richard; compared to a time when she felt most alive and had everything to hope for. Her apartment is just as much a "realm of the dead" as Richard's. Like the other characters in Cunningham's novel she questions the value of her present life and whether it isn't a negation via triviality of the life she could lead. Then the feeling moves on. Clarissa is disappointed but relieved to find her life is her own and that she wants no other. She holds onto the prospect of preparing Richard's party as affirmation and begins arrangements.

• It is revealed to her that all her sorrow and loneliness, the whole creaking scaffold of it, stems simply from pretending to live in this apartment among these objects...

--Clarissa considering the possibility of escaping her present life. p92, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

[edit] Characters in "The Hours"

1923 Virginia Woolf; Leonard Woolf, Virginia's husband; Vanessa Bell, Virginia's sister.

1949 Laura Brown; Dan Brown, Laura's husband; Richie Brown, Laura's son; Kitty, her neighbour.

1999 Clarissa Vaughn; Sally, Clarissa's partner; Richard Brown, Clarissa's friend.

[edit] Major themes

[edit] LGBT Issues

'The Hours' concerns three generations of questionably lesbian or bisexual women. Virginia Woolf was known to have affairs with women; Laura Brown kisses Kitty in her kitchen, and Clarissa Vaughn is in a lesbian relationship with Sally, yet once had an experimental relationship with Richard. Peripheral characters also exhibit a variety of sexual orientations.

To some extent the novel examines the freedom with which successive generations have been able to express their sexuality freely, to the public, even to themselves. As such, a definable sexuality for the characters of Virginia Woolf and Laura Brown are hard to ascertain. It could be argued, as does the author Michael Cunningham himself on the DVD commentary of the film version of 'The Hours', that were such characters born at later times in different circumstances they would come out as lesbians.

The book has widely been thought of as having more mainstream appeal than most gay fiction, perhaps because the central characters have been said to be 'characters that are gay', rather than 'gay characters'.

[edit] Mental Illness

Cunningham's novel suggests to some extent, perceived mental illness can be a legitimate expression of perspective. The idea that sanity is a matter of perspective can be seen in Virginia Woolf's censoring of her true self because this will appear as insanity to others, even to herself; Cunningham's modern-day readership is able to understand Virginia's state of mind as other than 'insane':

She has learned over the years that sanity involves a certain measure of impersonation, not simply for the benefit of husband and servants but for the sake, first and foremost, of one's own convictions. --Virginia Woolf. p83, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

[edit] Literary Themes in The Hours

The Human Fascination With Mortality
The three main characters in The Hours search for meaning in their lives and evaluate suicide as a way of escaping the problems they face. Virginia, Clarissa, and Laura are incredibly sensitive and perceptive to the world around them. Each moment causes them to critically evaluate how they feel about living, so they constantly consider suicide as a way of evading the oppressive aspects of their lives. On the day explored by The Hours, Virginia Woolf tries to decide whether to have her character, Clarissa Dalloway, kill herself at the end of her book. We know that Virginia eventually ends her own life, so her deliberations about Clarissa partly reflect her own personal struggle with the idea of suicide.

Clarissa Vaughn dwells on the difference between her current life and the summer she spent in Wellfleet with her lover, Richard, at age eighteen. Richard’s illness causes her to ponder the way that time acts on people and changes them. Though she herself does not commit suicide, she witnesses her friend’s death and often evaluates whether the best days of her life are gone. Small slights, such as the absence of an invitation to lunch with Oliver St. Ives, make her feel insignificant, and she thinks about how this sense of insignificance seems like death. The perceived immortality of movie stars and great writers, particularly the way their memory will outlast the memories of those that have lived less public lives, fascinates her.

Laura Brown feels trapped by the constraints of her role as a suburban housewife and sees suicide as a possible escape. The idea of shutting off the chatter and clamor of life in an instant seduces Laura. As she is an intellectual, she thinks at first that her fascination with suicide is an objective, academic interest. She thinks that she would never actually be able to go through with killing herself. But as she feels the constraints of her own life closing in around her, she starts to seriously evaluate the idea of suicide. When she stands at the mirror staring at the bottle of sleeping pills, her interest is no longer purely hypothetical.

The Constraint of Societal Roles
The women of The Hours try to define their lives within the roles that society has set out for them but without sacrificing their own identities. They have varying degrees of comfort with their respective roles, ranging from Clarissa, who thinks occasionally that she’s too domestic, to Laura, who feels trapped by the life that she’s found herself living.

Clarissa lives with her female lover, a domestic situation that some might consider extraordinary. Despite her outsider societal status, she has established a stable and familiar routine. Mary Krull considers her to be “bourgeois to the bone,” while Richard comments that she has become the quintessential “society wife.” She has a lovely, well-appointed apartment, but she sometimes feel alienated from the domesticity of her surroundings. When she stands in her kitchen, she barely recognizes the plates that she herself bought and feels dislocated from the environment that should theoretically bring her satisfaction and comfort. She questions whether she has made the right decision by making such safe choices for herself. Virginia understands that she is an eccentric and, to an extent, embraces the role of the “mad writer.” She questions why she didn’t turn out more like her mother or her sister Vanessa. Both of these women could act as authoritative heads of the household who manage their lives perfectly. Meanwhile Virginia cannot even manage her servant Nelly—and she knows that she falls short in this respect. She wonders why she knows exactly how a person would manage servants but cannot put this idea into practice. Ultimately Virginia decides to make her character Clarissa into the English society wife that she never could be.

Laura has the severest case of conflict between her true self and the role that she has been handed. She married Dan out of a sense of obligation toward him and toward the world. She believes that the world has been saved by the soldiers that fought in World War II and that it is her role as a woman to serve as a wife and mother to the men returning from battle. Her needs have been subordinated to sense of duty and obligation to her family. As a result, she constantly looks around her and wonders whether her house, her child, and even her cake fulfill her personal desires. By the last chapter, she feels as if she is floating detached through her life, so disconnected that her life has become something she reads, much as she would read a story in a book.

Ordinary Life As More Interesting Than Art
The main characters try to find meaning and significance in every aspect of the world around them. In choosing to draw out the events of one day throughout a whole novel, Cunningham reveals the thoughts, attitudes, and perceptions of his three main characters through their small encounters with recognizable, everyday experiences. The women of The Hours, Clarissa in particular, cannot walk down the street without having a profound experience or revelation: the sight of a woman singing in the park makes her think about the history of the city she loves, while a glimpse of a movie star in her trailer causes her to pause and consider the ways that fame can make people immortal.

The perception of the world as meaningful is not a purely passive experience. Laura channels her restricted creativity into the domestic act of baking, treating the cake she makes for her husband as if it were a work of art. When the cake fails to live up to expectations, Laura feels not only the frustration of failing at the task but also her failure at finding satisfying outlets for her creative impulses.

As a writer, Virginia Woolf has a thoughtful, evaluative eye that gives her an acute understanding of the world around her. Even small moments can bring on great revelations. While sitting with her sister Vanessa at tea, chatting informally about a coat for Angelica, Virginia has a profound appreciation for the simple intimacy of the moment and wells up with tears. While each woman’s intense sensitivity allows her to feel deeply attuned to life, they also experience more acutely the heartaches and frustrations that come with minor setbacks. Though they cope with these setbacks with differing degrees of stoicism, each woman often feels overwhelmed by her life and the choices she has made.

[edit] Quotes

• It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later, to realize that it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk, the anticipation of dinner and a book...What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other.
  • p98, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.
• ...Virginia lingers another moment beside the dead bird in its circle of roses. It could be a kind of hat. It could be the missing link between millinery and death.
  • p121, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.
• We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds & expectations, to burst open & give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning, we hope, more than anything for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so...
  • p225-226, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.

[edit] Trivia

• On her way to Richard's apartment, Clarissa Vaughn thinks she sees Meryl Streep. Meryl Streep ended up playing Clarissa Vaughn in Stephen Daldry's movie adaptation of 'The Hours.'

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Cunningham, Michael, 'The Hours,' Fourth Estate: Great Britain, 1999 paperback edition, p18.

Preceded by American Pastoral by Philip Roth

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1999

Succeeded by Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri