Essay on The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Contemporary novels have imposed upon the love tribulations of women, throughout the exploration of genre and the romantic quest. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their eyes were watching God (1978) and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (2000) interplay on the various tribulations of women, throughout the conventions of the romantic quest and the search for identity. The protagonists of both texts are women and experience tribulations of their own, however, unique from the conventional romantic novels of their predecessors. Such tribulations include the submission of women and the male desire for dominance when they explore the romantic quest and furthermore, the inner struggles of women. Both texts display graphic imagery of the women’s inner experiences through confronting and engaging literary techniques, which enhance the audiences’ reading experience. Hurston’s reconstructions of the genre are demonstrated through a Southern context, which is the exploration of womanhood and innocence. Whilst Woolf’s interpretation of the romantic quest is shown through modernity and an intimate connection with the persona Clarissa Dalloway, within a patriarchal society.

The 1920s exist in the popular imagination as a time of freedom and wild energy, a time where social mores were discarded and independance embraced. This perception hardly fits with the reality. As with most eras the 1920s had a multitude of conventions and taboos. As with most eras, those who broke with such things were frowned upon. While parts of society were changing, conformity was still very much valued, as explored in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Through the character of Clarissa Dalloway and her parallel found in Septimus Smith, Woolf portrays oppressive conformity and the inner self it hides, especially as related to queerness and compulsory heterosexuality; all this serves to illuminate the themes of conventionality and conversion

This approach to queer subtext has been has always been a part of Western media as we as we explored in the film “The Celluloid Closet” (1995). Queer representation for many years was an continuous uncategorized personification that was vaguely acknowledged but to those who understood the subtext, it became an undercurrent of complex coded information that eventually paved the way for the integration of queer identification within the hetero film storylines. Doty speaks about this and also mentions that at some point in time representation of queer culture and sexuality

Queer of color critique is, by definition, intersectional. As opposed to examining domesticity through the lens of a queer person or a person of color, the queer of color critique analyzes the ways that race, gender, and sexuality are built off of each other. Roderick Ferguson’s piece stems off of the presumption that racial non-normativity, or non whiteness and sexual non-normativity,

Throughout the 1950’s, the United States belonged to the Leave It To Beaver era. Families were structured around a strong, hard working father and a wonderful homemaker mother. Children were brought up with solid ideologies on what society expects from them and were warned about living a different and dangerous life. Only one-year separates Tennessee William’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room from there publishing dates during this decade of unwavering beliefs. These texts were seen as extremely controversial during their time due to their themes of homosexuality. Sexual orientation was an awkward topic during such a “to the book” time period and these texts pushed the limits, making them remarkable and memorable works. Both Tennessee Williams and James Baldwin explore the panic men experience while trying to comprehend what sexual orientation they belong to and highlight the masculine gay man. These texts also examine the woman’s role in the mist of it all.

Some skeptics such as Audre Lorde: may, argue that the focus of Larsen’s novella focused primarily on the juxtaposition of race and sexual identity of Black feminism in the early twentieth century. However, Larsen makes use of unstable identities that can been seen through the passage via Brian Redfield and John Bellew. The husbands’ envelope the extent of male privilege and contrarily shows their means of working against it. By exploring these men, it offers a more critical view to understanding Clare and Irene

Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles re-tells the classic tale of The Iliad through the romantic relationship highly speculated between Achilles and Patroclus. In a diachronic approach to historical queer narratives, I will analyze queer identities and representation within literature with an emphasis on contemporary queer narratives. Queer narratives are especially important stories to perpetuate and recognize both historically and contemporarily, as they impose, perpetuate, or upset notions of normalcy. The Song of Achilles solidifies historical queer identities and experiences that have otherwise been absent, overlooked, or erased in the Iliad (and other historical texts). Accurate queer representation is important for understanding the historical past, giving voice, visibility, and validation to queer identities, and recreating identity in the present.

Like PIG, many works in queer theatre are representations of life experienced by the writers. The gay community is brought together by similar events such as coming out and harassment by the intolerant. These happenings are the underlying forces that give the material for queer theatre, and as the times change theatre topics evolve. The truth is a state of fabulosity is what one makes of it. We can create the presumptions that the characters in our three plays are all fabulous because they are unapologetically what they want to be; but to take such deep topics and use such a rudimentary term, that is associated with glitzy and loud characteristics, would be to dilute the importance of queer theatre as a movement. Gay theatre is turning a page

The comparative study of texts and their appropriations reflect the context and values of their times, demonstrating how context plays a significant role. Virginia Woolf’s novel modernists Mrs Dalloway (1925) and Steven Daldry’s post modernists film The Hours (2002), an extrapolation, explore the rapid change of social and philosophical paradigms of the 20th century, focusing on women whose rich inner lives are juxtaposed with their outer lives. They place the characters in their respective context, to respond to, the horrors of the consequences of war and AIDS and the vagaries and difficulties of relationships, sexuality and mental illness. Through their differing intertextual perspectives the film and novel represent similar values, within different contextual concerns.

Patriarchal Society and the Erasure of the Feminine Self in The Story of an Hour

In Foucault and Queer Theory Spargo defines queer theory as a nebulous group of cultural criticism and analysis of social power structures relating to sexuality . It is these power structures and aspects of culture that are responsible for the discourse that creates and informs ones understanding of gender, race, and sexuality. However these aspects of identity do not exist separately from one another, but are constructed in tandem throughout history. These layers of identity inform each other in a way that is difficult if not impossible to separate. They do not act independently with an additive effect but intersect constructing their own unique set of experiences and perspectives. In this paper I will be exploring queer theory

  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.

In Virginia Woolf’s book, Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith grow up under the same social institutions although social classes are drawn upon wealth; it can be conceived that two people may have very similar opinions of the society that created them. The English society which Woolf presents individuals that are uncannily similar.

According to Judith Butler’s theory, gender is a social concept and not a natural part of being, therefore making it unstable and fluid. Gender identities are produced through what Butler calls “performativity,” the repetitive acts of expression that form and define the notions of masculinity and femininity. These repeated performances are engrained within the heteronormative society and impose these gendered expectations on individuals. In this respect, gender is something inherent in a person, however Butler writes “gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to pre-exist the deed.” In Olga Tokarczuk’s House of Day, House of Night identity is undoubtedly central to the characters’ stories, specifically the strict social constructs of gender that is snarled with one’s identity. Tokarczuk’s novel presents a mosaic of stories that put into question heteronormative gender roles, while offering an alternative way of existence. Analyzing House of Day, House of Night with Judith Butler’s gender theory demonstrates the characters struggles within the rigid constructions of gender and how some ultimately deal with moving past such restricting expectations.

In the book Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf wanted to cast the social system and bash it for how it worked. Her intricate focus is focusing not on the people, but on the morals of a certain class at a certain historical moment.