The Hours Theme

The men and women of The Hours view death as an escape from an ordinary lifestyle which lacks anything truly extraordinary or exhilarating. Laura Brown considers death as an alternative to the constraints of her role as a mother and a wife. Both Richard Brown and Virginia Woolf ultimately commit suicide in order to escape their illnesses and their failures to live up to society's expectations. Though Laura does not end her life, she does die symbolically to her family.

Throughout history, women have struggled to be seen as equals and have had to fight for their freedom from the roles society placed upon them. Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman both use their literary works to show the challenges women went through, and how they battled for the freedoms they desperately wanted. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story about a woman that goes to a summer home to rest and get well under the supervision of her husband who is also a physician. Her husband decided it would be best if she sat in a room alone and did nothing. In the end, she becomes insane and finally finds her freedom. “The Story of An Hour” is about, Mrs. Mallard, a woman who has just found out her husband has died. Mrs. Mallard

The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman written in the 1890s both reflect gender roles of this time, specifically women’s roles. In these stories both of the women are oppressed by their marriages, and by the end of the stories both wish to be rid of their husbands. Also, in both of these stories these women experience mental illnesses, mainly depression. These illnesses were looked at as something minor during this time, was it because psychologists were uneducated, or because as women their mental stability did not really matter? These stories connect so well because of their work to bring to the surface the reality of gender roles in the 1800s. Even though these stories were fictional their ideas were very real. By comparing how men and women were treated during this time, and how they are treated more equally now, it shows that with time American has come a long way.

Mrs. Mallard in the story “The Story of an Hour” is about a woman who had a good life until the unfortunate event of her husbands death, now she has decided she will change her life and be a successful independent woman. She is now left to deal with the grief and support herself along with her six other children. Her internal conflict is her desire to be independent role for women's feelings of being oppresses through her marriage versus her desire for freedom. The external conflict was the restrictions society placed on women, and the desire for more roles on females during this period of time.

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.

The central value connecting Mrs Dalloway and The Hours is an affirmation of life. Although suicides feature in both Stephen Daldry’s film and Virginia Woolf’s novel both texts echo Woolf’s words from her 1922 diary: ‘I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual.’ Both Woolf’s modernist 1925 novel and Daldry’s 2002 postmodernist film focus on women whose rich inner lives are juxtaposed with their outer lives constrained by the contexts in which they live. The characters are placed in their respective context, to reflect on, or respond to, the consequences of war and AIDS, the difficulties of personal relationships, class, gender and sexuality.

In many works of literary merit, authors often juxtapose freedom and control as a means to comment on the role of different groups in society. The roles of women are often portrayed in numerous works through not only the freedom a woman but also the control men place on the women in their lives. This positioning of these two contrasting ideas is evident in “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin as well as “A Rose for Emily” by Williams Faulkner as traditional values of the two different times are shown though the actions and beliefs of different characters. Both authors present female protagonists who face challenges and limitations as

Soon, excitement wears off, and reality sets in. For many generations, even into the early twentieth century, women all over the world fall as victims into the deep, never-ending hole of domestic violence. In “The Story of an Hour,” Louise Mallard accepts her fate as being submissive and obedient to her husband even though her life as the “perfect wife” is nothing less than torturous. In “A Jury of Her Peers,” the self-confidence and self-esteem of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are continuously diminished publicly by their husbands. Mr. Peters puts down the very act of Mrs. Minnie’s household duties when he states, “Well, can you beat the women!

Margarita Engle, a poet, and novelist, once said, “Marriage without love is just one more twisted form of slavery.” In the eighteenth century, marriage was the exit door of many women from their homes whether they believed in love and filled their hearts with hope, or had no choice, and they were sold to men as if they were cattle. In The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin shows complex issues such as marriage, independence, symbols, and ironies. After hearing the news that Brently Mallard was dead in a railroad accident, Richards, Mr. Mallard’s friend, went to the house to be next to Mrs. Mallard and to help her at this difficult moment. Contrary to what everyone was worried about, Mrs. Mallard knew that she would lament her husband’s death, but she was full of hope, dreaming of her freedom, appreciating life beyond the window, and a new beginning. Unfortunately, Mrs. Mallard’s dreams faded when she went downstairs and her husband arrived alive, and she could not stand it and died. Focusing on The Story of an Hour, there are three main points related to women in the early eighteenth century, such as oppressive marriages, women’s new perspective and ways of liberation, and women’s submission and obedience that demonstrates how women survived, even though they were not heard.

Kate Chopin’s short story ,”The Story of an Hour” is written in the early 1900’s when women were expected to abide by men. In the story, the narrator Mrs. Mallard was informed by her sister Josephine, that her husband had been in a terrible accident and that he was dead. Mrs. Mallard has heart trouble but when she’s alone she expresses her relief instead of mourning her husband’s death. Mrs. Mallard locks herself in her room for an hour and contemplates what her new life would be like without restrictions. In the end, Mrs. Mallard dies because she has been updated about the accident and finds out her husband actually lived. The short story,”The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins, is written in a time of distress for women in America.

If a stranger was to walk up to the average college student and ask a simple question such as: “What was the most mentally and emotionally challenging time in your life”, some might answer, making it through freshmen year of college, a tour in Iraq, helping my parents pay rent, or the lucky few may reply: “Waking up this morning”. In reality, we as human beings, no matter our walks of life, have all experienced challenges that we have had to face with raw emotion and gut. In Elie Wiesels’, Night, a no holding back account of Wiesel’s own experience of his life and journey through a Nazi concentration camp in World War II. Wiesel’s account of the horrors he witnessed and endured during his time in the concentration camp lets us know that

For many generations, our society has had a recurring flaw, of which being the tendency to rely on the basis of societal norms so often that it gradually forms into a system of oppression. Women are obliged to become submissive housewives and caretakers. They are obliged to follow these popular beliefs to be deemed norma l and those who contradict these very beliefs are considered selfish and peculiar. However, in the novel The Hours by Michael Cunningham, he exhibits how the societal mold placed on Laura Brown caused her to become a persevering and resilient woman and break out of her barriers.

The Hours is a movie that won the most awards in 2002.The movie is mainly about relationships, love, and death. This movie follows a single day in the lives of three women in different time periods between 1941 to 2001.The clothes that all three of these women wore were from different time periods. It is apparent from this movie that throughout history women were faced with trials and tribulations. Through each of their lives they battled with their own identity and the roles that they should play in society. In fact, this movie is mostly based on three women and their reflection on the novel Mrs. Dalloway. Virginia Woolf is the author of the novel Mrs. Dalloway, accordingly Laura Brown, reads

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.

In "Man of The Hours", an interview published in People magazine, Michael Cunningham describes The Hours as "essentially an optimistic book that deals with the terrible things that happen to people"(105). More precisely, the book is about three women living in different eras and addresses several issues, among them homosexuality, suicide, and feminism.