The Hours - Michel Cunningham

The hours:

Michael Cunningham, whose best known novel is The Hours, is born the 6th of November 1952 in Ohio, United State. The novel deals with different aspects of life.

He writes aspects of 3 women who come from 3 “world”. They are different by there economic conditions, by there social issues and by the century in whom they live. The characters in his novel are seen by himself or herself, most of the time, as a failure. We know that Michael Cunningham’s life is pretty similar to the protagonist of this novel. He’s gay as Richard and Clarissa and he lives in Greenwich Village too. He reads “Mrs. Dalloway” in the 50’ as Laura Brown. So, his life influences the writing of “The Hours”. We can see a kind of autobiography in this book. In this essay, I’m going to concentrate myself on these 3 women; Mrs. Woolf, Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Vaughan.

We are in 1923 with the story of Virginia Woolf while she is writing “Mrs. Dalloway”. We follow her falling down with her mental illness. The book begins in the 1941 when she committed suicide.

With the second protagonist we are in 1949 with Laura Brown. She lives with her husband, Dan, and her son, Richie in Los Angeles. We follow her reading Virginia’s book, Mrs. Dalloway, and she falls down too. She desires to commit suicide but chooses to leave his family and moves to Canada. She did not have the nerve to commit a suicide, but her son, when he would be older, who was suffering from AIDS, falls down to windows and die.

The last protagonist I decide to talk about is Clarissa Vaughan, also called Clarissa Dalloway by Richard who was a one-time lover of her. We are in 2001 in Greenwich Village even if she is financially stable and independent. She had a daughter who was conceived by artificial insemination by an unknown donor.

So, are the novel’s characters unusual, or are such feelings of failure an essential and inevitable part of the human condition?

Their feeling of failure may come from different factors. They are struggling with internal nervous thoughts about where they lived, about their wedding, their mental illness and their thoughts about suicide. These three women have gay sexual feelings; Virginia Woolf for her sister, Laura Brown for her Neighbour Kitty and Clarissa Vaughan for Sally. Virginia and Laura can’t talk or live their sexuality as they want because of the period in wich they lived, it was taboo and bas seen. But Clarissa can live with it without any problem.

The characters are described as normal people of their century, in appearance. But they have mental illness and they see their life as a failure. They all have lost or are losing the one they love. They are just sick because of what they lived every day. And the fact that they have to play it off like nothing happened don’t help them. Laura shares an unexpected and imitate moment with Kitty: “Kitty snakes her arms around Laura's waist. Laura is flooded with feeling. Here, right here in her arms, are Kitty's fear and courage, Kitty's illness. Here are her breasts. Here is the stout, practical heart that beats beneath; here are the watery lights of her being—deep pink lights, red-gold lights, glittering, unsteady; lights that gather and disperse; here are the depths of Kitty, the heart beneath the heart; the untouchable essence that a man (Ray, of all people!) dreams of, yearns toward, searches for so desperately at night.” We also know that Virginia is attracted by her sister and she kissed her. “Nelly turns away and, although it is not at all their custom, Virginia leans forward and kisses Vanessa on the mouth, It is not an innocent kiss, innocent enough, but jut now, in their kitchen, behind Nelly’s back, it feels like the most delicious and forbidden of pleasures. Vanessa returns the kiss.”

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