Compare And Contrast Mrs Dalloway And The Hours

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During the Modernity period, society transitioned into a progressive way of thinking, characterised with an Avant-garde approach to literature and the arts. While artistic approaches were transformed, civilization remained confined by the societal constraints brought about by the introduction of modernity. Virginia Woolf’s enlightened and controversial Mrs Dalloway interweaves the lives and stories of three multifocal narrators lost in life and time in Stephan Daldry’s The Hours. Both texts leave their characters succumbing to their opulent internal self becoming constrained by the contexts, which surround them, forced to battle or surrender to gender restrictions and the insusceptibility of mental deterioration. Link to the question.

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While Mrs Dalloway focuses on the lack of feminist individuality and societal constraints, Laura Brown struggles to bake a “ridiculously easy” cake, in the hours, emphasising the pressures surrounding her inability to uphold the perceived normalities of modern wifehood. This conjures a sort of frustration, relating Brown to Mrs Dalloway the same text she reads in the film, stating, “maybe because she’s confident everybody thinks she’s fine”. This demonstrates that Laura, like Mrs Dalloway, employs her potent facade to conceal her inner emotions, allowing the successful maintenance of the charade of 1950s housewife. Laura’s inability to forsake her house-life despite her internal adamancy embodies the allegorical and literal struggles of both Clarissa Dalloway and the author Virginia Woolf, in escaping social conformity, as contextually women were obligated to prize their reputation rather than individuality. Mrs Dalloway’s postmodern parallel Clarissa Vaughn embodies the prospects of life Clarissa Dalloway idealises in the nostalgic Bourton. Emancipated, working and socially accepted lesbian, Clarissa continues “throwing parties to cover the silence” interlacing her motives with not only Mrs Dalloway but also her cinematic counterpart Laura brown, using the role of social organiser as camouflage for the …show more content…

Septimus Warren Smith stands as the embodiment of the mental health struggle of modernity. Suffering from a severe case of shellshock, Septimus like the author Virginia Woolf becomes prisoner to the modern medicalisation of society, forced to repress his “madness” to the confines of his own mentality.
Struggling to come to grips with the void state of humanity, Septimus develops a reluctance to conform to the authoritarian approaches of his doctors, “Sir William … never spoke of madness instead he called it a sense of proportion” solidifying society forceful conformity, refusing to acknowledge the presence of madness rather referring to it as a choice. Since, “once you fall human nature is on you… Holmes and Bradshaw are one you”, losing control of the mind and succumbing to mental illness permits life to trample over individuality, forcing isolation, separation and weakness. Septimus’ death metaphorically salvages his individuality, deciding to escape the terrors of living. The echo of lines from Shakespeare Cymbeline “Fear no more the heat ’o the sun / nor the furious winter’s rages” personifies the passions and desires of Septimus to escape his internal prison, seeing the definitive end as an enticing consolation to the horrors of society.

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