The Oppression Of Women In Michael Cunningham's The Hours

Back in the late nineteenth century, when World War II was just over, women in the labor force were not as many as we have now. Women were considered domestic caregivers, with sole responsibility for the home and child rearing, while men were considered to work to support the family. Written in the last decade of the nineteenth century, when the tenacious stereotype about women’s gender role was changing, Michael Cunningham’s The Hours demonstrates the struggle a woman, particularly Laura Brown, had during the post-war era. She seems to have a content life with her generous husband and adoring three-year-old son. However, she subconsciously constructs her identity around the image of the “ideal woman” and is actually having a constrained life.

It seems it falls back to the conventions developed by society in the nineteenth century where people grants female maintain a home. As she describes, “Because the war is over, the world has survived, and we are here, all of us, making homes, having and raising children, creating not just books or paintings but a whole world—a world of order and harmony where children are safe, where men who have seen horrors beyond imagining who have acted bravely and well, come home to lighted windows, to perfume, to plates and napkins (42).” In other words, she can’t leave because she feels its her duty and obligation to take care of her husband and son. As we all care how people look at us, so does Laura. She cares about what the world thinks women should behave. She acts as what other people expect her to be. The narrator writes, when she stops looking after her son for a moment and tries to find a place to read a book alone, “She wants—someplace private, silent, where she can read, where she can think—is not readily available. If she goes to a store or restaurant, she’ll have to perform—she’ll have to pretend to need or want something that does not, in any way, interest her. She’ll have to move in an orderly fashion; she’ll have to examine merchandise and refuse offers to help, or she’ll have to sit at a table, order something, consume it, and leave …… Even a library would be too public, as would a park (145).” In other words, she doesn't want anyone, even they don't know her, to see her not being the “ideal woman.” She is just pretending to love her husband and her son. She thinks, “She is herself and she is the perfect picture of herself (76)” when she is making a birthday cake with her son. It may seem she is fulfilled with her position as a mother. She means, however, she is acting as what the world expects the “ideal woman” to be, but this is not truly herself because as she describes