Throughout literature’s history, stories have examined the correlations and conflicts between the lives of men, women, and the ageless specter of death that often looms within its pages. Novelist Michael Cunningham has been lauded again and again for his exploration of such themes in masterpieces such as The Hours – a novel that presents readers with the life stories of three women and how those stories intertwine in unexpected and often poignantly moving ways.
The Hours is a complex tale of three generations of women, each tackling many of the same issues in different eras and with vastly different results. The three main characters are Virginia Woolf, a writer living in early twentieth century London; Laura Brown, a suburban housewife in Los Angeles in the 1950s; and Clarissa Vaughan, a New Yorker in the late twentieth century. Despite the century-spanning gap that separates them, they all connect in a variety of ways and at crucial turning-points in their lives.
The novel begins with Virginia Woolf in her heady London days of the early twentieth century. Virginia is an acclaimed author whose work is revered worldwide, yet she suffers from crippling depression punctuated by manic highs and deep lows present throughout the novel. It’s this bipolar state of mind that will ultimately lead to her suicide, yet this is only the first of many tragedies that readers are introduced to in The Hours.
In the following storyline, readers meet Laura Brown, a 1950s housewife in Los Angeles who gravely contemplates the roles she is currently playing in her life as a wife and mother. The reader sees she is also deeply in touch with her love of reading and writing, but she is unable to fully embrace these passions in part due to her home life with her husband, Dan, and son, Rich. The saving grace in her life is her secret friendship with a mysterious woman named Kitty, whose life stands in stark contrast to the traditional path Laura finds herself on.
In the third narrative, readers meet Clarissa Vaughan, a professional woman in New York City at the end of the twentieth century. Clarissa is an independent and successful woman who, like Laura Brown, is grappling with her role in today’s society. After receiving news that her long-time friend and one-time erotic partner, Richard, is terminally ill, Clarissa further investigates her life, its many facets, and the individuals within it. Clarissa’s connection to Virginia Woolf is revealed through her close ties to Richard who, in turn, has a strong link to Woolf.
The connections between these characters all converge when the novel reveals Clarissa’s plan to host a small birthday party for Richard and the task given to her by Richard that she find Woolf’s groundbreaking novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa willingly dedicates her time to planning the birthday party, but in doing so, risks her own job and relationships as her personal ambitions and morals become increasingly entangled in the situation.
The Hours is an incredibly powerful novel that creates deeply poignant links between three generations of women and their collective journeys through love, loss, and life. Through their stories, readers are assured that their own lives can still find hope in the seemingly mundane days. In addition, Cunningham’s deliberate balances of the past and present, between literature and modernity, art and logic are sure to leave readers both enthralled and changed.
