The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Think: How does the author handle the transition between the interior and the exterior? Which characters' points of view are primary to the novel; which minor characters are given their own points of view? Why, and how does Woolf handle the transitions from one point of view to another? How do the shifting points of view, together with that of the author, combine to create a portrait of Clarissa and her milieu? Does this kind of novelistic portraiture resonate with other artistic movement's of Woolf s time?
Chapter 1
Homework Assignment: The story is told from the 3rd point of view. Shift it to the first person point of view. You become Virginia Woolf. Write an interior monologue describing her physical, psychological and emotional journey to the river.
Writing for Your Group Magazine:
Use the stream
of consciousness technique to write a piece for your Feb. Issue magazine. The
inner voice can be yours or a persona you take on. The inner monologue does not
have to reveal any particular story, simply
it reveals many intricately intriguing inner thoughts on a subject of how an
action takes place.
Study Questions
1.
Clarissa Vaughan is described several times as an "ordinary" woman. Do you
accept this valuation? If so, what does it imply about the ordinary, about being
ordinary? What makes someone, by contrast, extraordinary?
2. Flowers and floral imagery play a significant part in The Hours. When and
where are flowers described? What significance do they have, and with what
events and moods are they associated? How do flowers affect Virginia? Clarissa?
3. Cunningham plays with the notions of sanity and insanity, recognizing
that there might be only a very fine line between the two states. What does the
novel imply about the nature of insanity? Might it in fact be a heightened
sanity, or at least a heightened sense of awareness? Would you classify Richard
as insane? How does his mental state compare with that of Virginia? Of Laura as
a young wife? Of Septimus Smith in Mrs. Dalloway? Does insanity (or the received
idea of insanity) appear to be connected with creative gifts?
4. Virginia and Laura are both, in a sense, prisoners of their eras and
societies, and both long for freedom from this imprisonment. Clarissa Vaughan,
on the other hand, apparently enjoys every liberty: freedom to be a lesbian, to
come and go and live as she likes. Yet she has ended up, in spite of her unusual
way of life, as a fairly conventional wife and mother. What might this fact
indicate about the nature of society and the restrictions it imposes? Does the
author imply that character, to a certain extent, is destiny?
5. Each of the novel’s three principal women, even the relatively prosaic
and down-to-earth Clarissa, occasionally feels a sense of detachment, of playing
a role. Laura feels as if she is "about to go onstage and perform in a play for
which she is not appropriately dressed, and for which she has not adequately
rehearsed" [p. 43]. Clarissa is filled with "a sense of dislocation. This is not
her kitchen at all. This is the kitchen of an acquaintance, pretty enough but
not her taste, full of foreign smells" [p. 91]. Is this feeling in fact a
universal one? Is role-playing an essential part of living in the world, and of
behaving "sanely"? Which of the characters refuses to act a role, and what price
does he/she pay for this refusal?
6. Who kisses whom in The Hours, and what is the significance of each
kiss?
7. The Hours is very much concerned with creativity and the nature of
the creative act, and each of its protagonists is absorbed in a particular act
of creation. For Virginia and Richard, the object is their writing; for Clarissa
Vaughan (and Clarissa Dalloway), it is a party; for Laura Brown, it is another
party, or, more generally, "This kitchen, this birthday cake, this conversation.
This revived world" [p. 106]. What does the novel tell us about the creative
process? How does each character revise and improve his or her creation during
the course of the story?
8. How might Richard’s childhood experiences have made him the adult he
eventually becomes? In what ways has he been wounded, disturbed?
9. Each of the three principal women is acutely conscious of her inner self
or soul, slightly separate from the "self" seen by the world. Clarissa’s
"determined, abiding fascination is what she thinks of as her soul" [p. 12];
Virginia "can feel it inside her, an all but indescribable second self, or
rather a parallel, purer self. If she were religious, she would call it the soul
. . . It is an inner faculty that recognizes the animating mysteries of the
world because it is made of the same substance" [pp. 34-35]. Which characters
keep these inner selves ruthlessly separate from their outer ones? Why?
10. Each of the novel’s characters sees himself or herself, most of the
time, as a failure. Virginia Woolf, as she walks to her death, reflects that
"She herself has failed. She is not a writer at all, really; she is merely a
gifted eccentric" [p. 4]. Richard, disgustedly, admits to Clarissa, "I thought I
was a genius. I actually used that word, privately, to myself" [p. 65]. Are the
novel’s characters unusual, or are such feelings of failure an essential and
inevitable part of the human condition?
11. Toward the end of Clarissa’s day, she realizes that kissing Richard
beside the pond in Wellfleet was the high point, the culmination, of her life.
Richard, apparently, feels the same. Are we meant to think, though, that their
lives would have been better, more heightened, had they stayed together? Or does
Cunningham imply that as we age we inevitably feel regret for some lost chance,
and that what we in fact regret is youth itself?
12. The Hours could on one level be said to be a novel about middle
age, the final relinquishment of youth and the youthful self. What does middle
age mean to these characters? In what essential ways do these middle-aged
people--Clarissa, Richard, Louis, Virginia --differ from their youthful selves?
Which of them resists the change most strenuously?
13. What does the possibility of death represent to the various characters?
Which of them loves the idea of death, as others love life? What makes some of
the characters decide to die, others to live? What personality traits separate
the "survivors" from the suicides?
14. If you have read Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, would you
describe The Hours as a modern version of it? A commentary upon it? A
dialogue with it? Which characters in The Hours correspond with those of
Woolf’s novel? In what ways are they similar, and at what point do the
similarities cease and the characters become freestanding individuals in their
own right?
15. For the most part, the characters in The Hours have either a
different gender or a different sexual orientation from their prototypes in
Mrs. Dalloway. How much has all this gender-bending affected or changed the
situations, the relationships, and the people?
16. Why has Cunningham chosen The Hours for the title of his novel
(aside from the fact that it was Woolf’s working title for Mrs. Dalloway)?
In what ways is the title appropriate, descriptive? What do hours mean to
Richard? To Laura? To Clarissa?