Libby's Reviews > The Hours

Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work, ‘The Hours’ details the lives of three very different women. He opens his narrative with a fateful day in 1941 when Virginia Woolf has decided to fill her pockets with stones and walk into the river. The scene is heartbreaking. Woolf is obsessed with probing into the meanings and mysteries of life. She is also fascinated with death, menaced with headaches and nervous instability. Her husband, Leonard, provides stability for her fragile nature and nurtures her creative spirit. But even his cocoon of safety could prove stifling at times, more a prison than a refuge. Cunningham takes the reader back to 1923 when Woolf, although struggling with her demons, was beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway. More than anything, Virginia appreciates and revels in those times when she can write with clarity and ease.

“This is one of the most singular experiences, waking on what feels like a good day, preparing to work but not yet actually embarked. At this moment there are infinite possibilities, whole hours ahead. Her mind hums. This morning she may penetrate the obfuscation, the clogged pipes, to reach the gold. She 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 more than the sum of her intellect and her emotions, more than the sum of her experiences, though it runs like veins of brilliant metal through all three. It is an inner faculty that recognizes the animating mysteries of the world because it is made of the same substance, and when she is very fortunate she is able to write directly through that faculty. Writing in that state is the most profound satisfaction she knows, but her access to it comes and goes without warning.”

All of Virginia Woolf is primed for those moments, those hours of the day when she can write as though her soul has been called up and she can be delivered to the page. Cunningham’s description sounds like what many artists, writers, and creatives speak of today as “flow.”

The touchstone between Cunningham’s two other characters and Virginia Woolf is Woolf’s novel, Mrs. Dalloway. It is present-day in New York. Richard, who is dying of AIDS has always called his friend, Clarissa Vaughan, Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa is a 52-year-old book editor and like the book character Richard names her for, she has to go buy flowers for Richard’s party. He is to receive the Carrouthers Prize for his literary work. Richard lives alone in an apartment in New York. He is emaciated, keeps the apartment dark and cluttered where he spends countable hours contemplating the value of his life, his work, his relationships. How can he tolerate these hours when he knows everything that will happen during the day?

Richard believes he is only getting the literary award because he is sick and dying. He doesn’t think it’s because of the worth of his work. Clarissa is getting some recognition because one of the characters in Richard’s novel is based on her. She is getting to the age when she thinks of her own mortality and what will be remembered of her when she is gone. I think most of us would like to be remembered after we’ve died, to think that our lives were worthwhile and counted for something. Every though Richard has complicated feelings about the literary award, he still wants it. Of Clarissa standing beside two young girls in New York waiting to catch a glimpse of a movie star, Cunningham writes, “These two girls standing beside Clarissa, twenty if not younger, defiantly hefty, slouching into each other, laden with brightly colored bags from discount stores; these two girls will grow to middle age and then old age, either wither or bloat; the cemeteries in which they’re buried will fall eventually into ruin, the grass grown wild, browsed at night by dogs;” Does Clarissa believe that Richard’s novel is her chance of being remembered, of remaining above ground when her body enters its eternal rest? I believe so.

The third character is Laura Brown. It is 1949, Los Angeles, and Laura is reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. It is her husband, Dan’s birthday. Laura prefers the book world of Mrs. Dalloway to the reality of taking care of her son and making a birthday cake for Dan. Because she is pregnant, she can ignore the clock ticking off the hours. She can stay up late reading, then reach for her book first thing in the morning to ease her transition into the day. Laura is enamored with Woolf’s writing. “How, Laura wonders, could someone who was able to write a sentence like that–who was able to feel everything contained in a sentence like that–come to kill herself? What in the world is wrong with people? Summoning resolve, as if she were about to dive into cold water, Laura closes the book and lays it on the nightstand. She does not dislike her child, does not dislike her husband. She will rise and be cheerful.”

I enjoyed this novel for its delectable soaring prose and for its insightful exploration of women's lives. Three women, unhappy in different ways, but all searching for a meaningful path. Most of us are searching for meaning in our lives and trying to align our priorities to make the most of our limited hours. When we read books, we are seekers which in my mind, is a sacred endeavor; yet even here (or perhaps especially here) many of us feel the need to be diligent and purposeful. Through reading this novel and articles about Virginia Woolf, I have discovered that she was influenced by French philosopher, Henri Bergson, who emphasized creativity and freedom rather than the mechanistic nature. So now, I have become more interested in Woolf and Bergson. Highly recommended except for those who are suffering doldrums or despondency, then avoid like the plague.