Women’s Day 2022 Project: Reading Mrs Dalloway and The Hours

I read the book Mrs Dalloway (1925) for its reputation and its authoress. Unfortunately I read the book when I was too young to understand or appreciate the psyche and essence of the book. Having said that I would say some aspects of the book especially the characters Miss Doris Kilman and Septimus Warren Smith stayed with me. I felt “something” after reading the book.

Like everyone else in any way interested in the book Mrs Dalloway and its author Virginia Woolf, I too had heard so much about the Oscar winning film The Hours (2002). The film is supposed to be about Mrs Dalloway and Woolf.

After meaning to watch it for a long time I finally watched The Hours in a phase when I was closest to the stereotypical “lonely housewife” (major theme of both Mrs Dalloway and The Hours). The film instantly touched me, shook me. It is one of the few films I have watched innumerable times.

The Hours is an adaptation from a book by the same name. The Pulitzer winning book The Hours (1998) is written by Michael Cunningham. It was impossible to get the book in any book store around me. That led to me taking a major step in my personal life. Going out of my comfort zone and fighting with my anxiety issues, I ordered a book online!

Thus The Hours became the very first book I ordered online. The bonus was, my copy is “used” so I got it really really cheap! (It seems most of the times I can’t write my musings on books without gloating about how I got the book at a very cheap price. What is wrong with me!)

Since for me there was a time gap as well as a place-in-life gap between reading Mrs Dalloway and The Hours I could not get the parallels between the books. I always intended to reread the books back to back and finally I did it this year for the Women’s Day, 2022. And I was only 20 days late!

PREMISE AND CHARACTERS OF MRS DALLOWAY

Since last few years I have been reading a book by Virginia Woolf annually. Her books are not easy reads. Her language is difficult and some time few sentences forget to end. But in the end the hard work I put into reading her books more than compensate by the rewarding experience.

I invariably relate to her ideas. She gives words to the emotions I even did not know I have. She never ceases to amaze me with the innovative ways she uses language to put her ideas across.

And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning – fresh as if issued to children on a beach.

Mrs Dalloway has one of the most famous first lines in the history of literature.

Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

Characters

Mrs Clarissa Dalloway nee Parry

Clarissa is a middle aged housewife set in the ways of a typical London high society hostess. Once upon a time she was young, pretty, and full of possibilities. At that point she could have chosen an alternative path of anti-London high society hostess, someone who goes against convention, someone whose contribution to society matters. That’s what conveyed to an educated housewife/homemaker constantly throughout her life – her life work does not matter, she does not matter, she does not contribute to the society. If and only if the housewife had chosen to go for a paid job or voluntary charity works, she would have mattered.

Clarissa could have chosen to marry the idealistic Peter Walsh and gone to one of the colonies to “matter”. Or even could have chosen a woman as her lover. Instead she chooses to be the wife of Richard Dalloway, the conventional society man.

The middle aged Clarissa mulls over the lives she never could have. The world forces housewives to mull over the alternative lives because they and their life work “don’t matter”.

The world thinks housewives’ work does not matter and it can survive without them. This shows world is blinded either by stuffing its face in cloud or in sand. Housewives matter, Clarissa matters, the parties matter. Parties give pleasure as well as scopes for socialisation and networking.

Clarissa could have been happy with her parties had the world not trivialised her parties and her green frocks; had the world not passed her over.

She is the “lonely housewife” who is growing lonlier as she is getting older. Her evolution into the middle aged wife was not painless. She sees her sister getting killed in an accident at a young age. More recently she suffers from serious physical ailment.

…she thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist’s religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.

And of course she enjoyed life immensely.

She cares about her husband and loves her teenage daughter deeply. But like most of us mothers of teenagers she can’t fathom how to show her affection without driving her away. She does not approve Elizabeth’s close proximity to her religious zealot teacher but she has to maintain silence.

Behind unhappiness and lonliness of Clarissa there maybe another reason – her suppressed sexuality. She still thinks about one kiss from her girlhood friend Sally.

…yet she could not resist sometime yielding to the charm of a woman…she did undoubtedly then feel what men felt. Only for a moment; but it was enough.

Like Clarissa was once, her daughter Elizabeth is now full of possibilities. She wants to take the path of intellect, at least for now.

Richard Dalloway

The typical workaholic husband Richard is not a bad person. But he has never really thought about his wife’s emotions. He is oblivious while the wife goes through an existential crisis with the way the world treats her or rather ignores her. Silent broody type Richard was branded as conformist by Clarissa’s girlhood friends.

Richard really cares about his family and social issues. He has improved with age even Sally accepts that.

Peter Walsh

The idealistic, sensitive and eternal lover Peter Welsh has the problem of thinking he and his ideas are better than all others. After being rejected by Clarissa he went to India and made himself fall in love few times. Now he is supposedly in love with a married woman, a woman about whom he forgets to think about for days. After all his pretensions about non-conformist ideologies he has actually achieved nothing. He can’t even think of local Indians as his equals. He is in London to beg for a job.

Yet he constantly in his mind criticises the conventional life of Clarissa, most probably to hide his undying love for Clarissa. He reminds me so much of Philip from Of Human Bondage because Peter too never really could break free from his love for a woman.

Clarissa is not in love with Peter but she keeps thinking “what would Peter say?”

Sally Seton

At young age this friend of Clarissa was the “cool girl” whom Clarissa looks up to and maybe more. Clarissa still gets thrill from that glorious one time Sally had kissed her and she reciprocated. Meanwhile the “cool girl” has turned into a happy middle aged mother with five boys.

Miss Doris Kilman

Although a minor character but I find Doris to be quite interesting. She is religious fanatic and apparently a history scholar. For these reasons she thinks she is better than Clarissa. She is obviously in love with Elizabeth in her own way.

…except for Elizabeth, her food was all that she lived for…

The pleasure of eating was almost the only pure pleasure left her,…

Hugh Whitbread

He is a supposedly shallow friend of Clarissa, whom she knows whole her life. She feels comfortable with him. Some may say that is because both are shallows. But then it is so easy to judge someone when one does not see each little ripple in their mind.

He was a jerk definitely in youth, he punish kissed Sally for talking about equal voting rights for women.

Hugh has improved since then. He is now a kind and caring husband to his sick wife Evelyn.

Lucrezia “Rezia” Warren Smith

Italian girl Rezia has left her familiar world for her husband Septimus. She constantly misses her home and her family but feels duty bound to be there for her husband. The husband is in a nervous breakdown. Lonely and young Rezia is desperate for the husband. Her entire focus is her husband but is she even a speck of dust in her husband’s focus!   

Septimus Warren Smith

A first world war hero is not being able to shake off his war time experiences chiefly because he can’t feel anything. He thinks he is a fraud. He can’t feel love for his wife yet married her and displaced her from her home. He can’t even feel anything about his fellow soldier’s death. He is obviously going through post traumatic distress and a mental breakdown.

He gets visions and hears voices. The writer has expressed many harsh truths through Septimus’s visions and hearings. In a sense he is a visionary.

Themes

Feminism: Mrs Dalloway has a significant place in feminism literature. The book overs many contemporary women issues – young women are supposed to choose the right partner with a conventional life, the older women become invisible, voting rights of women and so on.

Mental health: Septemus has a break down while Clarissa is fighting depression and Peter is always anxious. Out of these three Septemus is only a diagnosed patient. Through treatment Woolf has narrated the problem with mental health doctors. The cause of issues may lie in suppressed sexuality, lonliness or war yet doctors want to put everyone forcefully inside a box. The doctor wants his patient to have his own sense of proportion. I wonder if Woolf has used her own experience with mental health doctors to write this portion.

Shakespeare: What can Shakespeare do in Mrs Dalloway? Yet he is everywhere.

Richard thinks no one should read Shakespeare’s sonnets

…no decent man ought to read Shakespeare’s sonnets because it was like listening at keyholes (besides, the relationship was not one that he approved)

The allusion here is to the rumour about Shakespeare having written his poetries for his gay lover.

Septimus thinks Shakespeare has hidden messages and signals in his works for the future generations to see. He reads Shakespeare’s plays frequently and feels the urge to tell the world about the secret signals in the bard’s works.

How Shakespeare loathed humanity

Septimus has the same idea about Shakespeare’s sexual orientation

Love between man and woman was repulsive to Shakespeare.

Style

As it is a well known fact that Mrs Dalloway is written in streams of consciousness style. There is very little of description by the writer or conversation. Most of the book is about what people are thinking, thoughts of people. As we know thoughts can jump from “what should I cook today” to “is there an intelligent life form outside of Earth….of course there are some astronauts in their missions outside the planet……” and such. It takes a little work for the readers to keep track of the thoughts. The book hasa natural and seamless transition from one person’s thought to another’s. Assimilating thoughts of so many different characters successfully is ingenuity. Something I had seen in Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Reprieve. This book came out 20 years after Mrs. Dalloway. I can’t help thinking that Sartre must have been influenced by Woolf’s style.

Characters in the book regularly hear striking of Big Ben, a sign of passing of the hours.

PREMISE AND CHARACTERS OF THE HOURS

The book begins with the narration of Virginia Woolf’s suicide, especially what went through her mind before entering the river with a stone in her pocket.

Then book is simultaneous narration of the lives of three different women on a single day. The day in the women’s lives happens in different places and different decades. Time and place change but the life remains the same and also the single glorious summer day.

The women chronologically:

Virginia Woolf in suburb on London, 1923

She is writing Mrs Dalloway while struggling with her mental sickness. For her health they have shifted out of London to suburb. But Virginia misses London. She would love to go back if her husband agrees.

She will return to London. Better to die in London than evaporate in Richmond.

On this particular day apart from writing the book she is hiding from her aggressively efficient cook and is planning for a tea for her sister and her children.

Like any timid house wife she does not know how to control her servants without making them upset. Her guests came earlier than expected.

Her nephews and niece find an injured bird. They arrange a final resting place for the bird, which made Virginia want so much to lie on it. Final resting place for her is so much more enticing than the day.

The most thrilling part of the day is her stealing a non-sisterly kiss with her sister behind the efficient cook. That gives her lots of excitement and gave me lots of confusion. Is there any hint of incestuous relationship here?

At the bottom of everything, she can’t stop being scared of the “headaches” coming back again. She wants to just go away for few hours if not for forever.

Laura Brown in Los Angeles, 1949

She has few similarities with Virginia’s day. She wants to steal few hours too to be alone and to read Mrs Dalloway in peace.

She is a bookworm married to a war hero. She did it because one has to do it. Her heart is never into it.

She is trying to keep herself by gaining entry into a parallel world.

Like Virginia and Clarissa Dalloway she can’t stop imagining about women in an erotic way.

Like both of them she had a brief thrilling kiss with a woman.

If Virginia is inept at managing her servants Laura can’t bake a birthday cake perfectly. Both presume  domestic incompetence, which add to their anxiety.

After contemplating various places, she books a hotel room to read in peace for some time with the same sneaky feeling of a married woman meeting her lover. Whole day whatever she does she keeps on thinking how better off had she been with reading. These parts I relate a lot to

In another world, she might have spent her whole life reading.

She feels guilty in this world about reading. She needs to feel happy about her pregnancy, and about her loving son and husband. But she can be truly happy only alone with books.

Wasn’t a book like Mrs. Dalloway once just empty paper and a pot of ink?

Husband Dan is a war veteran like Septemus yet in this story it is the wife who can’t adjust to the post-war world

Little Richie is only 3 year old. He worships his mother.

He is happy to see her, and more than happy; he is rescued, resurrected, transported by love.

Laura can’t be natural with him. She has to plan about interacting with her own son. Because she is not the “mother” she has only worn the skin of motherhood.

She will not mourn her lost possibilities, her unexplored talents (what if she has no talents, after all?).

In Richie’s future life and creations the mother becomes his muse, the goddess and the ghost.

As Laura reads Mrs Dalloway, long excerpts from the book are given in The Hours.

Clarissa Vaughan in a time when the twentieth century is getting ready to bid adieu and Clarissa’s city New York is going through the devastation of AIDS in its gay community

Clarissa Vaughan is somewhat distorted reflection of Clarissa Dalloway. Clarissa is in a steady lesbian relationship with Sally. Clarissa and Sally have careers in publishing and production respectively. They well off and live a comfortable life in New York. Sally has daughter Julia through donated sperm. Like Mrs Dalloway’s daughter Elizabeth, Julia too under the influence of an older woman named Mary Kroll. Mary is lesbian but Julia is not. She is in one sided love with Julia. She with her frugal and non-conformist life style judges Julia’s mother Clarissa.

Although she is with Sally she has never stopped loving her girlhood lover and forever friend Richard. Now too she can’t stop thinking what could have been had she continued with an open relationship with the very gay Richard. Richard can’t stop criticising Clarissa’s conventional life. She is practically a suburban wife if one takes away gender of Sally from the equation.

Clarissa is shy and conservative. She feels uncomfortable kissing people on lips, except Sally. But then I feel if she does not want to kiss on mouth then should not it be “her lips – her choice”? Why should someone or she herself make her feel small and prude for that?

Richard meanwhile is dying from AIDS. He is a talented poet. He loves Clarissa romantically if not sexually. He has a problem of creating his versions of his friends. He makes them interesting and different from their true self.

Recently I read a play by Sartre named No Exit. I was so surprised to find few ideas or maybe references in the book

Hell is a stale yellow box of a room, with no exit, shaded by an artificial tree, lined with scarred metal doors…

She herself is trapped here forever, posing as a wife. She must get through this night, and then tomorrow morning, and then another night here, in these rooms, with nowhere else to go.

PARALLEL BETWEEN THE HOURS AND MRS DALLOWAY

Both books depicts one day in the lives of the characters in a beautiful summer day of June.

In both books the women are preparing for a party on that evening. Only exception is Virginia Woolf, who was looking forward to few guests at the tea time. Coincidentally when I read the books I was prepping for a party I was giving. Strangely enough the hostesses in the stories have so much spare time to have existential crisis on the day of the party. And here I was swamped for days for my party and had to keep my existential crisis in the back burner. 

Both books depicts when one becomes the “wife” in any kind of relationship the paths are closed and the attention to the wife gets slashed constantly. Her life reduces to some errands and some hours.

Sickness is a major theme in both books. While Mrs Dalloway covers mental health, The Hours majorly focuses on AIDS. In both books people get visions and hear voices. In the process they lose the track of time. Are they seeing the future, present, or past? Similar idea has been used in Martian Time-Slip (1964) – mental patients see time differently than us.

Suicide and suicidal thought are major thread in both books. Mental sickness and suicide go hand in hand. Woolf had meant to kill Mrs Dalloway by suicide in the book as implied in The Hours.

She felt somehow very like him – the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad he had done it;…..

Both Richard and Sally get yellow roses for their partners. Virginia’s sister’s children prepare death bed for the bird with yellow roses. It was so nice and comforting that Virginia wanted it to be her death bed.

Public experience can become one and unified like when in Mrs Dalloway the public spotted a car of royal family or an advertisement balloon on sky. In The Hours there is public frenzy over a modern royalty – a Hollywood actress.

In life we mostly don’t get the happy endings. But gradually we learn to be happy with our endings. Most endings in both books seem more like compromises to love what we have.

…and for a moment they are both simply and entirely happy. They are present, right now, and they have managed, somehow, over the course of eighteen years, to continue loving each other. It is enough. At this moment, it is enough.

Character Comparison between The Hours to Mrs Dalloway

Clarissa Vaughan is Clarissa Dalloway. Clarissa’s partner Sally is the silent but good natured Richard Dalloway. Richard and his one time lover Louis both have some characteristics of Peter Welsh. Richard is one time suitor of Clarissa and he constantly criticises Clarissa’s life choices. Louis is back from another country. He cries easily and falls in love even more easily.

There is clear cut parallels between the daughters, daughters’ influencers, and pompous friends of both Clarissas.

If in Mrs Dalloway Clarissa is ignored by Millicent Bruton because she is “only a wife” then The Hours’s Clarissa is passed over by Oliver St. Ives. Both are quite interesting lunch hosts.

My honest opinion is although The Hours is brilliant it can never be read independently. It has to be read after Mrs Dalloway or the essence of the book is lost.

FILM THE HOURS AND BOOK THE HOURS

Meryl Streep is supposed to be a good actress but personally I feel she acts as if she is always exasperated in general at all the characters in every movie. She plays Clarissa as someone frustrated with everyone around her. But the book’s Clarissa is someone who loves people and wants to make everyone happy around her. In return she expects love and care.

…Clarissa believes, you measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion. You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect;

When the children were arranging the bird’s final bed, one of the boys is kinder to the bird than the girl.

Oh, if men were the brutes and women the angels – if it were as simple as that.

But in the movie the little girl is shown to be kinder.

The film has failed to depict many nuances of the book. For instance Laura’s craze for reading and books has not got justice in the movie.

On the other hand the book does not have the movie’s best line (according to yours truly)

“Mrs Dalloway would you be angry if I die before the party?”