Beyond all myths: The Hours

Beyond all myths: The Hours HUM 3285: British and American Literature Spring 2015 Dr. Perdigao March 18, 2015

Trespassing and Permissions • http://www.usatoday.com/community/chat_03/2003-03-27-cunningham.htm • http://bombsite.com/issues/66/articles/2208

Thematic Elements • Leaden circles—interlocking storylines (3, 9, 29, 37) • As literary criticism • Biography of Virginia Woolf, Laura Brown reading Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Vaughan (“Mrs. Dalloway”) throwing a party • Sense of time: 1941, 1923, 1949, 1998 • Sense of place: Sussex, Richmond, Los Angeles, New York City • Writing, reading, revision • Death wish and Eros

Recasting • Septimus Warren Smith • Evans • Peter Walsh • Richard Dalloway • Clarissa Dalloway • Elizabeth • Sally Seton

A shopping list • Prologue: 1941 • Bombers in sky • Body surfacing (8): oeuvre? • NYC at end of 20th century • “There she is” (13) • World as “rude and indestructible” (14) • World of objects, place of books (22) • Meryl Streep as queen (27, 95); will be immortal, as text (51) • Struggling with writing (29), another way to begin: “Mrs. Dalloway said something (what?), and got the flowers herself. It is a suburb of London. It is 1923. Virginia awakens. This might be another way to begin, certainly; with Clarissa going on an errand on a day in June, instead of soldiers marching off to lay the wreath in Whitehall. But is it the right beginning? It is a little too ordinary?” (29)

A shopping list • Mirrors—Woolf, Dalloway, both ignore (57); “through the looking glass” (56) • As fictional characters (61) • “there’s time. And place. And there’s you, Mrs. D. I wanted to tell part of the story of part of you” (66). • Dan Brown—WWII survivor (39) • “She will rise and be cheerful” (41) • Her “art and duty” (42) • 1950s world, with shelves stocked (45)

Simulacra • Clarissa Dalloway will die (69) • Place of metafiction • Cake as work of art (76), as text Mrs. Dalloway • Gendered space—battlefield vs. domestic: Woolf’s sense of the world and the way that Laura’s space is defined (84) • As observer, flaneuse (92) • Clarissa: “She could live a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself” (97); Laura, learning of Kitty’s illness: the “quick unraveling of her life” (108) • Kitty as movie star (105) • Kitty’s life with Ray, as “Laura’s cake, writ large” (105) • As POW in the Philippines; works at Department of Water and Power • In contrast, Dan as “war hero,” and Laura joins the “aristocracy” by marrying him (104)

(Re)placing Literature • Clarissa: “She will try to create something temporal, even trivial, but perfect in its way” (123). • Clarissa and Sally as fictions, dead in photos (128)

(Re)placing Literature • Louis as literary critic (132), future of the theatre; his exotic lover (134) • Room of one’s own—Laura? (145) • The Normandy hotel • Room 19 • Laura: “It would be as simple, she thinks, as checking into a hotel” (152). • Julia and Mary (158) • On death, the funeral (165) • Going to London, as lark and plunge (167); Woolf’s story mixes with Dalloway’s • Fleeing for a few hours shared by Laura, Virginia

Revelations • Laura, state of “unbeing” (188) • Richie “devoted, entirely, to the observation and deciphering of her, because without her there is no world at all” (192). • Hours not as freeing, but confining, for Richard (198) • “‘Remember her? Your alter ego? Whatever became of her?’” (198) • “‘This is her. I’m her. In need you to come inside. Will you, please?’” (198). • “‘I don’t think two people could have been happier than we’ve been’” (200). • Richard Worthington Brown (203) • Connections, failed connections

Senses of Endings • “The page is about to turn” (208) from Laura’s story to Virginia’s: she will write, save Clarissa with double; Woolf creates Septimus character as “deranged poet” and “visionary”—as Woolf herself? (211) • “Here we are” (217), Richard’s literary creations, real, mourning him • Revision of original text • Laura’s identity as mother, “ghost” and “goddess” (221)

Senses of Endings • “And here she is, herself, Clarissa, not Mrs. Dalloway anymore; there is no one now to call her that. Here she is with another hour before her” (226) • “‘Come in, Mrs. Brown,’ she says. ‘Everything’s ready’” (226).

Beyond all myths: The Hours