Applying Carolyn Dinshaw’s How Soon is Now? to Michael Cunningham’s The Hours highlights the queering of time in the novel. The novel explores three women, including Woolf herself, from divergent eras. Notably, there is not a contents page, leaving no structural or temporal guide to reading the novel. Similarly, chapter titles are merely the name of the woman on which the chapter focuses, meaning many chapters share the same title (i.e. “Mrs. Dalloway”), causing the content and times of the chapters to blur. Moreover, the chapters are not placed chronologically for the overall novel or for the narratives of the individual women. The prologue centers on Woolf’s suicide, and the sequence of chapters randomly shifts from “Mrs. Woolf” to “Mrs. Dalloway” to “Mrs. Brown.” By close-reading of The Hours’ prologue, various structural and textual devices emerge that showcase Dinshaw’s conceptions of nonlinearity, lived time, and multiplicity.
The only chapter that does not follow the aforementioned naming convention is the “Prologue.” Moreover, although the term prologue denotes a beginning, the content of the chapter is essentially an endpoint, detailing Woolf’s suicide despite the fact that Cunningham’s later chapters narrate earlier moments in her life. Even the first four sentences present a nonlinear timeline of events: “She hurries from the house…It is 1941. Another war has begun. She has left a note for Leonard, and another for Vanessa.” In a linear telling, Cunningham
Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor discusses many topics and insights that can be found in literature. Foster explains how each are used and the purposes they serve while providing numerous examples. Many of Foster’s insights can be found in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of An Hour” which was written during a time in history when women were often restricted by society and marriage. The story speaks of a woman who felt freed from the burden of marriage when she thought her husband died, only to die the moment she realized he was actually alive. Foster’s insights about weather, heart disease, and flight that are evident in “The Story of An Hour” greatly influence the story’s interpretation in several ways.
“But,” Woolf starts A Room of One’s Own, “you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction — what, has that got to do with a room of one’s own?” (3). This opening is the interruption to a thought that we didn’t hear; it is part of a speech that we aren’t in the audience for. The reader has barely ventured into the text, and already he is left disoriented. Instead of introducing her reader to her argument, Woolf immediately and intentionally puts this reader at odds with her work. These lines do not comfortably introduce her thinking; they charge us with the task of both discovering and analyzing the argument that Woolf plans to make — there is no room for the passive reader here. Throughout the text, Woolf works to estrange the audience from becoming emotionally involved in the text by taking that which is familiar and making it strange.
Time is the one thing that is constant in life. For some, this provides a remedy for anxiety. The idea that time will go on, no matter the events it beholds can provide comfort. However, other people see this clock that never ceases as a trap, containing its prisoners in a life of misery. This concept is ever so daunting in Michael Cunningham’s novel, The Hours. His three main characters, Clarissa Vaughan, Laura Brown, and Virginia Woolf, live in three different time periods. Through the span of twenty-four hours their stories intertwine, defying the rules of time which the characters themselves were left to contemplate. In his novel, The Hours, Michael Cunningham’s characters, Clarissa, Laura, and Virginia demonstrate both the negative and positive connotations associated with a progression of time through their narratives. Virginia and Laura, provide the negative connotations of time. Virginia is restrained by the toll that time has taken on her mental health. Laura is tortured by the plainness of her life and the idea of time prolonging agony. Lastly, Clarissa provides the positive connotations of time. She emphasizes the importance of appreciating life. Through these opposing viewpoints, Michael Cunningham introduces the bittersweet concepts of time.
Woolf rejects the notion of the 'exclusive' moment, of a cleanly separated past and present. Instead she satirizes the dramatic and unchangeable 'moment.' Woolf's transition between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries satirizes our conception of the exclusive “moment” for example, “with the total darkness and the "turbulent jumble of cloud covering the entire city”(45). The central point of transition, Orlando's gender transformation, also satirizes the concept of a ‘defining moment’. The authors illustration of the transformation (with the sounding trumpets and the three Ladies Chastity, Purity, and Modesty (101)) is compared by Orlando's perception of her body ("Orlando looked himself up and down in a long looking-glass, without showing any signs of discomposure, and went, presumably to his bath” (120) .
The plot and character development in The Story of an Hour’s was influenced by the gender roles at the setting’s time. In the story, Kate explores the roles of women during the late 19th Century and the problems caused by the boundaries of social rules. Through the actions of Mrs. Mallard, females are seen to be weak and perpetual dependents of the males, just like the case was in those old days. Her writings were highly inclined with her personal life experiences as she examines the subjects of
Dalloway, Virginia Woolf portrays the significance of time, its passing and the inevitable consequence: death. Through Big Ben’s tolling and Lady Bruton, the writer shows this and its impact on the characters. Besides, as they remember, characters reflect the correspondence between past and present and the significance of internal and external time. By going deep into the characters’ thoughts as they walk through London emblematic places, Woolf covers the present and precious memories of the characters’ lives. As the novel takes place in one day, Woolf emphasizes the inevitable march of time and eventually, the unavoidable death. As Clarissa Dalloway thinks; “it was very, very dangerous to live even one day”.
This is the chapter’s name because it’s just Hester and Pearl talking and walking. In the first part we see Hester’s loathing towards Roger. Later we are shown how unique a remarkable Pearl is with her understanding of the situation. Hester debates whether to tell Pearl the true meaning of her scarlet letter.
It’s 1.00p.m. and you’re listening to Literature Made Easy. With me is Felicia Kueh, an expert in English literature who had graduated with PhD in English Literature from The University of Edinburgh. Today, she is going to answer us several questions on ‘The story of an hour’ and ‘Desiree’s baby’ written by Kate Chopin. Welcome, Felicia.
It is considerably easier to identify the queerness of the novel’s characters and author than its political purpose. Michael Cunningham, the novel’s author, is a gay male and openly acknowledges that his sexual orientation influences his work – as can be seen by the fact that many of his novels involve gay characters and gay experiences. In particular, The Hours features three women who each have same-sex experiences – Virginia Woolf, Laura Brown, and Clarissa Vaughn.
“The key passage of the story, revealing a full view of Virginia Woolf’s philosophical concepts and her creed of reality, is the episode of the young couple who are presented as being completely lost in their private world of meaningful reality having to grope their way back hesitatingly into everyday reality” (Virginia Woolf’s A Haunted House: Reality and ‘moment of being’ in Her Kew Gardens 117). This couple engages in a conversation about the past. Simon, the man, reminisces about what his life would look like if he was not in the garden at that moment. The narrator portrays their relationship as a compromising union, a relationship that fears for the worse and tries hard to stay mutual. The narrator mentions, “’Tell me, Eleanor, d’you ever think of the past?’ … ‘I’ve been thinking of the past [about Lily] the woman I might have married… do you mind me thinking of the past?’ Why should I mind… doesn’t one always think of the past?’” (Kew Gardens 1192). This dialogue is interesting because they both go on to relay what their ideas of reality are. What remains of the past Eleanor asks? They go back and forth and offer their ideas of what fulfils one’s past; “’those ghostly figures under the trees… one’s happiness, one’s reality’” (1192)? The past is important because without one, one has nothing to write about or to compare ideas and thoughts. There is no fuel to encourage change like the past of Judith Shakespeare.
Literary traditions often focus on tragedy, whether it be personal, national, or universal. In this way, it gives the characters, author, and reader the reference point of a shared experience upon which to build a literary work. In the case of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, this uniting experience was the Great War. The remnants of this conflict can be seen throughout the novel in the lives and experiences of its characters. The integral nature of tragedy in Mrs. Dalloway means that future reimaginings and reframings must also include a uniting tragic event as a means by which to create parallels and show commonalities between characters. Michael Cunningham’s The Hours includes several different timeframes that allow for historical
Although the entire novel tells of only one day, Virginia Woolf covers a lifetime in her enlightening novel of the mystery of the human personality. The delicate Clarissa Dalloway, a disciplined English lady, provides the perfect contrast to Septimus Warren Smith, an insane ex-soldier living in chaos. Even though the two never meet, these two correspond in that they strive to maintain possession of themselves, of their souls. On this Wednesday in June of 1923, as Clarissa prepares for her party that night, events during the day trigger memories and recollections of her past, and Woolf offers these bits to the reader, who must then form the psychological and emotional make-up of Mrs. Dalloway in his/her own mind. The reader also learns of
Chapter five highlights on Woolf’s view about Carmichael as she symbolizes a massive transformation in the state of writing. She is depicted as an average female writer who writes without anger or abhorrence and without a stifling awareness of her gender. She voiced out that sometimes women like women and through this confession, Carmichael proved that the role of men is no longer necessarily central and, have made it possible that it is not essential for women to be dependent on men all the time. In the final chapter, the narrator exploits the image of man and women getting into the cab to symbolize the unity between man and women. Woolf produces that the ideal state of mind is an androgynous one, she insists that men and woman have a two faced mind, one with a masculine part and the other one with feminine. She emphasizes that both these parts of mind must be involved in order to create a lasting literary work. Woolf emphasizes on these two material possessions, poverty and lack of privacy. She stresses that without these two material possessions one is unable to have intellectual freedom and without freedom one is unable to produce a good literary piece. She encourages the readers to be themselves by saying, Judith Shakespeare still lives within all women, and that if women are provided with wealth and a room of their own in the next century, she will be reborn.
Dalloway but still differs when it comes to displaying streams of thought. Krapp’s Last Tape, however, shows its stream of consciousness in a different way. Unlike Mrs. Dalloway, The Hours divides up its streams of consciousness into three types of chapters named after the character it was about, Ms. Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway and Mrs. Brown. Each section tells the story and prospective of the women as they exists at different spans of time. However, all of the sections interlay with one another, for example Ms. Woolf spends her section on her ideas for a novel while in Mrs. Brown is reading Ms. Woolf’s finished work while Mrs. Dalloway is interacting with Mrs. Brown’s
This parallels the narrative structure of the novel as being circular, discontinuous and digressive. The same can easily be said for Mrs Dalloway as the novel almost jarringly weaves through many points of view. This fragmentation appropriates the concept of history in “Midnight’s Children”, which was developed by colonizers. History works for a particular class of ideology, and therefore it will be contaminated, oblique and subjective. In Mrs. Dalloway the characters themselves are subjective commentaries on English society, and they have been subjectively contaminated by Woolfe’s opinions of who they represent.