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Cunningham's The Hours: A Story about Life and Death
"The Hours" by Michael Cunningham is a complicated story that explores life and death. Cunningham attempts to distinguish his writings from author Virginia Woolf's by characterizing sanity and insanity while each protagonist contemplates their own life and suicide. Each woman in The Hours wrestles tension and confusion throughout the novel giving a sense that these issues transcend time. By introducing issues of homosexuality, infidelity, and suicide the reader is invited to think of life's experiences within the context of daily life.
Cunningham makes extensive use of intertexts to parallel author Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" which originally was titled "The Hours". The author makes references to Woolf's other works including "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond St.", "The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection", "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown", and "A Room of One's Own". In The Hours, all the characters and narrative strands connect to characters in Woolf's stories, principally Mrs. Dalloway. The Hours is broken down to trace a single day in the life of the story's three central characters, Mrs. Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (Clarissa Vaughn) and Mrs. Brown.
Mrs. Woolf parallels author Virginia Woolf preparing to start a new novel. Her day starts dealing with the characters who in real life work for her and her husband Leonard Woolf at their publishing company Hogarth Press. Mrs. Dalloway (Vaughn) appears to be a modern day Clarissa Dalloway who is the central character in both of Woolf's works; Mrs. Dalloway and Mrs. Dalloway in Bond St. Mrs. Brown is a narrative about Laura Brown, who is about to read Mrs. Dalloway; her name also connects with Woolf's essay "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Br...
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...pitiless light. And, there was nothing. Isabella was perfectly empty. She had no thoughts, she had no friends" (2464).
After living with AIDS for so long Richard ends the story by committing suicide. "I am afraid I can't make the party" referring to the party Clarissa is throwing in his honor. Richards says, "I don't think two people could have been happier than we've been." (200). Then Richard slides off the windowsill and falls. This is the same line Virginia ends her suicide note to her husband Leonard with, "I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been (7). Virginia walks to the river, places a heavy stone in her coat pocket, wades into the river and drowns.
Works Cited
Coffee, Michael. "Michael Cunningham: New Family Outings". Publisher Weekly 245 (1998): 53-54.
Cunningham, Michael. The Hours. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1998.
A strong year in 2000 was followed by an average of .6% growth rate from 2001-2005. Germany was affected by the world’s economic status, which caused a drop in German exports. Since exports are one of the largest contributors to Germany’s GDP, it caused the their economy to slow. In addition to the world’s economic status, they were also affected by the “appreciating euro and sagging domestic investment” (Marketline).
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...
“Lee, Harper 1926-.” Concise Major 21 Century Writers. Ed. Tracey L. Matthews. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 2136-2140. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 15 Feb. 2011.
“To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage.”(Lao Tzu). In Kate Chopin’s, “The Story of an Hour”, it tells of a heart trouble married woman, Louise Mallard, who learns that the man she loved and married, Brently has died. Mrs. Mallard’s behavior and emotions have shocked her entire family as she finds it a joyful and powerful event that may change her life for the hour that she has remaining to live. Mrs. Mallard considers his death as a freedom that she has yet longed for over so many years. As many readers begin to express their judgment towards Mrs. Mallard, the aspects of personal relationship may seem to convince those that maybe she was a bit selfish with her response. In the agony of a bitter marriage, “The Story of an Hour” portrays the reality of being in love, being married and finally having female independence.
The author behind the influential and famous novel To Kill A Mockingbird is a woman by the name of Harper Lee. This ingenious woman made magic with only her inventive mind, creative imagination, past experiences and passion for kindness and equality. She was born and raised in a time of prejudice and racism but she always found a way to keep her goodness intact. She never let herself get corrupted or influenced by frivolous and uneducated people. Harper Lee’s influences as a child and views of society as an adult inspired her to fight against the world’s prejudice outlook on life by writing To Kill A Mockingbird, a novel that argues against society’s biased views toward racism.
Book banning in the United States and anywhere else in the world I feel should be abolished. Books are published and written for a reason. The reason is to expand the mind to new things. Sure some books are better than others but there is no reason to challenge or ban books.
Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is oftentimes banned for depicting rape, as well as being “anti-white.” John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is discriminated against for containing too much profanity. The anonymously-written Go Ask Alice has been shunned for portraying drug use, sexual situations, and profanity. (Kelly) Other than being banned, though, these books all have something more in common; they are classic works that have timeless, moralistic value. They each tell a message. Their messages couldn’t possibly be conveyed in their original, meaningful essences if the contents of the books were to be altered or removed from society all together. Therefore, children and adults alike would miss out on countless opportunities to expand their enlightenment.
The most debatable and controversial form of censorship today is the banning of books in school libraries. Banning books that educate students is wrong and selfish. Censorship of books in school libraries is neither uncommon nor an issue of the past. Books with artistic and cultural worth are still challenged constantly by those who want to control what others read. The roots of bigotry and illiteracy that fuel efforts to censor books and free expression are unacceptable and unconditional. Censoring school books in libraries can often lead to censorship of our basic freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment. In some cases, a minority ends up dictating the majority in censorship cases. To be told what is permissible reading material and what is not is a direct violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution.
When regulating the content that someone sees or hears, it is the sole responsibility of the individual to block harmful or offensive content from themselves or their children. In an article by Dan Gutman, a children’s book author, he states that if a piece of literature is banned from a school library, it is not only blocke...
Memory of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa Dalloway and Peter Walsh are defined by their memories. Virginia Woolf creates their characters through the memories they share, and indeed fabricates their very identities from these mutual experiences. Mrs. Dalloway creates a unique tapestry of time and memory, interweaving past and present, memory and dreams. The past is the key to the future, and indeed for these two characters the past creates the future, shaping them into the people they are on the June day described by Woolf.
The extensive descriptions of Mrs. Dalloway’s inner thoughts and observations reveals Woolf’s “stream of consciousness” writing style, which emphasizes the complexity of Clarissa’s existential crisis. She also alludes to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, further revealing her preoccupation with death as she quotes lines from a funeral song. She reads these lines while shopping in the commotion and joy of the streets of London, which juxtaposes with her internal conflicts regarding death. Shakespeare, a motif in the book, represents hope and solace for Mrs. Dalloway, as his lines form Cymbeline talk about the comforts found in death. From the beginning of the book, Mrs. Dalloway has shown a fear for death and experiences multiple existential crises, so her connection with Shakespeare is her way of dealing with the horrors of death. The multiple layers to this passage, including the irony, juxtaposition, and allusion, reveal Woolf’s complex writing style, which demonstrates that death is constantly present in people’s minds, affecting their everyday
Clarissa Dalloway, the central character in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, is a complex figure whose relations with other women reveal as much about her personality as do her own musings. By focusing at length on several characters, all of whom are in some way connected to Clarissa, Woolf expertly portrays the ways females interact: sometimes drawing upon one another for things which they cannot get from men; other times, turning on each other out of jealousy and insecurity.
I read a story, after I finished reading it my mind was still reeling over what I had just read. Stories like this are quite impressive magnificent; they draw the reader into the story and leave them with a strong impact. How we interpret a text is in itself impressive, as every person is different, every interpretation is too. As I read “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, I could not help but notice that Kate Chopin uses the window to symbolize the future that Mrs. Mallard has been pinning for all her life. Chopin also uses Mrs. Mallard’s heart condition as a symbol of Mrs. Mallard’s marriage. The short story is consequentially the story of an oppressed woman who had to confine herself to the social norms of marriage. Through Formalism Criticism, we will explore the various symbols that Chopin uses to describe how Mrs. Mallard yearns for freedom, and through the Feminist Criticism, we will explore how the institution of marriage oppresses our heroin.
In Cunnigham’s The Hours, Virginia Woolf, through Cunnigham’s interpretation, is a character that is fascinated by mortality. In each event she experiences in the novel, she evaluates how she feels about living, and constantly considers suicide as a way to escape her oppressive life. One of these moments occurs when she is attending a “funeral” for a dead bird with her sister’s children. Although the reader knows that Virginia will eventually commit suicide, the “funeral” scene is an important character revelation because it reveals that at this point in the novel, Virginia was not ready to take her own life; and unfortunately, the film misses this important aspect of her character by condensing this scene.
The main theme in “The Story of an Hour” is a woman’s freedom from oppression. Mrs. Mallard does not react accordingly to the news of her husband’s death; in the third paragraph it states, “she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment.” After her initial wave of shock and sadness has passed, however, she becomes elated with the thought of finally being free of her husband. Originally, she is described as being “pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body” and having lines that “bespoke repression”; in an attempt to be a perfect wife to a man whom she did not even love, Mrs. Mallard has been masking her true self. Once she realizes that she has finally gained the freedom that she has been longing for, Mrs. Mallard begins to