Mrs Dalloway Vs The Hours

Regarding the first passage, according to Woolf’s thought, women were limited to the domestic sphere. The ideal of Victorian women was based on domesticity and motherhood. They did not participate actively in society and they were isolated. They just took care of their family and home. Women had relationships based on affection rather than power because they lived in a patriarchal society inwhich they were often silenced. Besides, they had a strong sense of belonging instead of having their own room, and their own independence.

Virginia Woolf was a victim of both the Patriarchal repressive Victorian society, which did not encourage women to participate in the intellectual life; and the tragic circumstances of her family. The author started suffering from mental illness when she losesher mother, and later her father and siblings. Woolf did not feel comfortable with Victorian values because they attempted on freedom. Like the other members of the Bloomsbury group, she was ahead of her time and she ignored the social taboos.

In respect of the second passage, I would like to highlight the concepts of life and time as ephemeral issues because both of them have a strongpresence in The Hours and in Mrs Dalloway in this sense. In The Hours the three women have to choose between life or death. Sometimes they choose life, other death, but they struggle to find their happiness: ‘Finally life is the most powerful thing’ the movie says at the end. For this reason, I think it is conveyed the message that every little thing and every little moment must be enjoyed because of thefragility of life, situations and time.

In my opinion, both passages are relevant to Woolf and Cunningham’s novels:
On one hand, in Mrs Dalloway it is told an ordinary day in the life of Clarissa, who is a middle-class woman. Clarissa in a given moment of her life (when she refused Peter’s marriage proposal) she sacrificed passion and adventure for a comfortable bourgeois lifestyle withRichard. As a consequence, Mrs. Dalloway’s life takes place mainly in the domestic sphere. She has a struggle between what she wants to be and what she must be. She is concerned with appearances; she masks her real feelings on being what society expects from her. She feels oppressed and she often thinks about death. Nevertheless, life prevails for her.


On the other hand, in The Hours, Virginia,Clarissa and Laura experience similar feelings and situations. To start with, Laura Brown is surrounded by material order. She lives in a beautiful symmetrical neighbourhood, in a extremely tidy house with her nice family. Moreover, she is expecting a baby. So, apparaently she leads a perfect life. In fact, she stands for the angel of the house. However, her mind is a chaos, she feels unhappy anddepressed. She is isolated from society. She is about to commit suicide, but at the end she chooses life, even though it involves leaving her family. Clarissa, who stands for Mrs. Dalloway, despite her personal situation is not the same as in the book, she is not happy either and she has to contain her emotions and feelings. After Richard’s suicide, she flings herself. Later on, Laura Brown,Richard’s mother, visit her and thanks to her words Clarissa realizes she should live.


In The Hours, Woolf is writing Mrs. Dalloway. Her situation is a bit different from the other women. She feels depressed and desperate because she says she is not happy in Richmond, she is confined to life outside of London and she longs to return there. The writer is the only one who chooses death instead oflife. She cannot manage her illness. Unlike the other two women, Virginia realizes her illness is progressing and she does not want to be a problem for her husband. She says she lives within obscurity and uncertainty about her life and death. So, she cannot bear the situation and suicide is the best option for her.

The Hours, the novel by Michael Cunningham dealing deals with three stories of...