Expectations in the Movie The Hours
analytical Essay
3009 words
Expectations in the Movie The Hours
We expect those endowed with a gift - be it artistic, intellectual or circumstantial - to cultivate that gift and use it as a vehicle for excellence in life. In the movie The Hours Virginia Woolf, the 20th Century British author; Laura Brown, a doted-upon 1951 Los Angeles housewife; and Clarissa Vaughan, a 2001 New York editor; struggle with their gifts and the expectations they, and others, have for themselves. All three women are obsessed with finding the right balance between living, freedom, happiness and love.
The Hours attempts to use one day to reflect Woolf s life and the impact her work has had on others. In the movie, Woolf is writing Mrs.Dalloway which Brown is reading and Vaughan sort of lives out. Woolf s novel connects the three women and affects their actions. It should be noted that Vaughan gets a lot less attention than Woolf and
Brown and seems to be more of a manifestation of Mrs. Dalloway. Vaughan, like Mrs. Dalloway, is a great party planner and is in the process of planning a party for a friend. Vaughan also projects Mrs. Dalloway's outward confidence and inward confusion.
THE GIFTS AND THEIR PRESSURES
A main theme throughout the movie is freedom. All three women actively seek it and at the movie's end each woman chooses what she thinks is best: Woolf drowns herself, Brown leaves her family and Vaughan finally lets go of her longtime friend and past lover, Richard. Each woman's decision, fueled by the circumstances which surround her, is reached after much thought and deliberation. Woolf s concern is Leonard's sanity and happiness. She realizes the great pressure she puts on him and sees her suicide as a way of freeing him from being responsible for ...
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... Biography, Volume 6: Modem Writers, 1914-1945. Gale Research,1991. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2004http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRCć
*"(Adeline) Virginia Woolf." Feminist Writers. St. James Press, 1996.Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2004. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRCć
*"Virginia Woolf." Gay & Lesbian Biography. St. James Press, 1997. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2004. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRCć
*Gay, Peter. "On not psychoanalyzing Virginia Woolf."American Scholar. Spring 2002
*Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf: A Biography Chatto and Windus, 1996.
*Bell, Quentin. Virginia Woolf: A Biography Harcourt (New York, NY), 1972
*The Hours (The movie) DVD Extras
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how woolf expresses her longing for the upbeat life of london and her right to choose the path of her life.
- Analyzes how virginia woolf, laura brown, and clarissa vaughan struggle with their gifts and the expectations they have for themselves in the movie the hours.
- Analyzes how woolf drowns herself, brown leaves her family, and vaughan lets go of her longtime friend and past lover, richard. each woman is under tremendous pressure from both herself and society.
- Analyzes how vaughan, like mrs. dalloway, is good at throwing parties and is in the process of planning one in honor of richard.
- Analyzes how woolf writes what she feels in an effort to identify and clarify her feelings and stands for. her dark tunnel was her battle with depression.
- Analyzes how woolf's mental condition and family history contributed to her fragile nature. her mother died, and her half-brother, george, began to sexually abuse her.
- Analyzes how leonard woolf's unfailing support, concern, and care for virginia served as a springboard for the publication of her greatest works.
- Analyzes how daldry and hare developed a movie that efficiently and effectively transcends time to portray the three women.
- Cites the gale group's concise dictionary of british literary biography, volume 6: modem writers, 1914-1945.
Related
- analytical
- Contemplating The Hoursanalytical essayThe Hours is about 3 women, Virginia Woolf,Laura Brown and Clarissa Vaughan who all have the same feeling in common. Each of the the women in three different time periods from in the 1940's, 1950's and the 1990's all share the thoughts of failure. Woolf thought she had failed as a writer, Brown thought she was a failure as a wife and mother, Vaughan also thought she was a failure as a writer. Each of the women also desired to escape out of their lives in the manner of suicide. Woolf's suicide was accomplished in the beginning of lthe story. Brown's attempt of suicide nixed by coming home and then later leaving her family. Vaughan's suicide thoughts was scrubbed when her friend Richard, fell to his death from a window because lhe was tired of living and he also felt that he was a faiiure.
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how the three women, virginia woolf, laura brown and clarissa vaughan, all share the same feelings of failure. each of the women desired to escape their lives in the manner of suicide.
- Analyzes how woolf, brown, and vaughan had a common bond in their relationships. each of the women were in relationships that were dominated by the male dominance.
- Analyzes how each of the three women had sexual desires and preferences. woolf had the same sex relationship with her sister vanessa but loved her husband, leonard.
- Analyzes how woolf, vaughan, and brown all thought she had failed, yet each of the women had their own struggle to deal with. even in a male dominated world, women can make it regardless of lifestyles and time periods.
743 wordsRead More - The Hours Womananalytical essay"A woman's whole life in a single day. Just one day. And in that day her whole life." In Stephen Daldry's film "The Hours", one of the clearest, most poignant subjects is that of human mortality and our ever-present fascination with it.
In this essay, the author
- Opines that stephen daldry's film "the hours" is about human mortality and our fascination with it.
- Analyzes how the story follows three different women through a day in their individual lives: clarissa vaughn, laura brown, and virginia woolf. each of these women show us different examples of how this fascination manifests and impacts our lives.
- Explains that clarissa vaughn is the only one of the three who could be described as happy in her day-to-day life. she relates closely to the character from "mrs.
188 wordsRead More - Death and Rebirth in the Hoursanalytical essayAdapted from Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Director Stephen Daldry and playwright David Hare, The Hours was inspired by Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway. It is no coincidence that The Hours was the working title Woolf had given Mrs. Dalloway as she was writing it. The emotional trauma that this film guides its viewers through becomes evident in the opening prologue. The scene begins with Virginia Woolf composing what would be her suicide notes to her husband Leonard and her sister Vanessa, the two most important people in her life (Curtis, 57.) She begins: "I feel certain that I am going mad again: I feel we can't go through another of these terrible times... You have given me the greatest possible happiness.. ." The portrayal of this process quickly demonstrates the turmoil Woolf is feeling, both from her oncoming episode of "madness" and the difficulty she is having finding the correct words to say "farewell" (Lee, Hermoine). The prologue comes to its climax as Kidman portrays Woolf's suicide. It is a gut-wrenching display of one's "matter-of-fact" acceptance of one's own coming death. Very dramatically, Woolf fills the pockets of her coat with large stones and stoically walks into a swollen river. Her head slowly disappears beneath the muddy water as all hope of her reconsidering her suicide is swept away with the current.
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how the hours was inspired by virginia woolf's 1925 novel mrs. dalloway. the opening prologue demonstrates the emotional turmoil that this film guides its viewers through.
- Analyzes how the hours introduces us to three women from three different decades, and their relationships with others, tied together by a common thread: mrs. dalloway.
- Analyzes how woolf's "re-born" character takes the role of the narrator in the movie "mrs. dalloway." the fragmentary method used in telling this story mimics the "stream-of-consciousness" technique found in many of her works.
- Analyzes how woolf felt suffocated and imprisoned by her life in boring richmond and felt her right to decide where she should live was taken away from her.
- Analyzes the symbolic scene of woolf fleeing her "asylum" by running down a dingy alley flanked by eight-foot stone walls, and leonard's comments about her feelings of being suffocated.
- Analyzes how woolf and septimus smith were victims of a lack of understanding and poor treatment of mental illness.
- Analyzes the literal example of woolf reaching forward in time to affect the lives of her readers in the character of laura brown.
- Analyzes how brown decides to commit suicide as she reads woolf's novel, mrs. dalloway, in a victorian-style room in the normandy hotel.
- Analyzes how the character of clarissa vaughn is influenced by woolf, dalloway, and leonard.
- Compares clarissa vaughn's richard with septimus smith, a world war i veteran who is suffering from post traumatic stress (shell shock).
- Analyzes how richard commits suicide by hurling himself out of a window after clarissa arrives to take him to the party she was throwing in his honor. woolf releases everyone else from the responsibility for her death.
- Analyzes how richard is actually laura brown's grown-up son richie, despite cinematic clues that they are the same person. their mother abandoned richard and the rest of her family shortly after her second child was born.
1360 wordsRead More - The Story of an Houranalytical essayThe Window the Woman and the Heart I read a story, after I finished reading it my mind was still reeling over what I had just read. Stories like this are quite impressive magnificent; they draw the reader into the story and leave them with a strong impact. How we interpret a text is in itself impressive, as every person is different, every interpretation is too. As I read “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, I could not help but notice that Kate Chopin uses the window to symbolize the future that Mrs. Mallard has been pinning for all her life. Chopin also uses Mrs. Mallard’s heart condition as a symbol of Mrs. Mallard’s marriage.
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how kate chopin's "the story of an hour" uses the window to symbolize the future that mrs. mallard has been pinning for all her life.
- Analyzes how mrs. louise mallard suffers from a weak heart and breaks out in grief after her husband's death.
- Analyzes how mrs. mallard's heart was broken, weak, and troubled, meaning she was unhappy with her life and mainly her marriage. a marriage cannot possibly be happy without love from both sides.
- Analyzes how mrs. mallard's room is a prison and the outside world is the only setting depicted with color, blue.
- Analyzes how the clouds piled up in the west, where the sun rises every morning, are a clear representation of her new life to come on the coming day after her mourning.
- Analyzes how mrs. mallard's married life was oppressive, and she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandon, in her sister’s arms.
- Narrates how the woman felt oppressed by her husband, never being able to do, as she would have liked, and just being woman kept her from being who she is truly.
- Narrates how the woman sank into her comfortable chair, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach her soul.
- Narrates how the woman's unhappiness with her life went as far as thinking, "with a shudder that life might be long"
- Analyzes how kate chopin illuminates her stories with clever language, meaning, and an immense criticism of how society oppresses the individual in the glorified institution of marriage.
1193 wordsRead More - Biography of Virginia Woolfanalytical essayWelsh, Camille-Yvette. "Woolf, Virginia." In Bloom, Harold, ed. Virginia Woolf, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2004. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 27 Apr. 2014
In this essay, the author
- Explains that virginia woolf was born on january 25th, 1882 to leslie stephan, editor of the cornhill magazine and the dictionary of national biography.
- Explains that virginia woolf's career took off in the wake of world war one and hinted with remnants of the wartime experience. after the industrial revolution women were slowly introduced to work and other small rights.
- Analyzes how virginia woolf uses sophisticated metaphors and symbolism to describe a time where women did not receive the respect they deserved nor taken seriously.
- Analyzes how woolf developed serious mental problems due to personal strains and stressors. she faced gender discrimination in her early life and was sexually molested by her half brothers.
- Analyzes how woolf explores the setbacks and obstacles the world has placed to hinder the advancement of women. she uses elaborate techniques to capture the audience's attention and deliver a message.
- Analyzes how woolf takes her time describing each and every detail of the grand luncheon that she is enjoying just to break it down and display the downside of her meals at fernham.
- Analyzes how woolf uses meaningless names to associate with herself. she is up front trying to show the audience that women had no level of respect or "importance" so can be addressed as anything.
- Analyzes how the reluctance of women is the direct effect of the consequences they would receive for even trying to think outside the box. woolf's mental condition also ties into the creation of this work.
- Analyzes how woolf uses examples and quotes from other writers and accomplished people to thicken her arguments. she is trying to show that women can be knowledgably and smart as well as men.
- Analyzes woolf's argument that women are being demeaned as they accept their ill treatment. the narrator is willing to have women from all over the world to not think like one, but as a whole.
- Analyzes how virginia woolf uses deep thought into her writing style to effectively send the audience into thinking. she expresses her feministic views using her experience and mind.
- Opines that woolf is one of their personal favorite writers. she writes her stories, novels, and short story essays by using figurative language.
- Explains virginia woolf's "a room of one’s own" in world literature: the nineteenth century by david damrosch and david l. pike.
- States that welsh, camille-yvette, and bloom, harold, eds. virginia woolf, bloom's biocritiques. philadelphia: chelsea house publishing, 2004.
1874 wordsRead More - Virgina Woolf and Feminismanalytical essayMarder, Herbert. Feminism and Art: A Study of Virginia Woolf. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968.
In this essay, the author
- Explains that virginia woolf is often categorized as being an aesthetic writer. her writings addressed many social issues especially those regarding feminine problems.
- Analyzes how in a room of one's own the narrator begins an exploration of women in literature. she attempts to answer many questions regarding women.
- Analyzes how the narrator uses words like weak, inferior, vane, etc. to emphasize the way men perceive women as being the weaker sex.
- Analyzes how the narrator is bewildered at her findings about great men such as mussolini, pope, napoleon and goethe and how they viewed women as inferior.
- Analyzes how the narrator creates a scene with the professor writing at his desk and uses several scenarios to explain why he is angry and emotional.
- Analyzes how the narrator notices the different headlines about men and women. woolf writes that england is under the rule of a patriarchy.
- Analyzes how the narrator uses the professor to represent man. she points out the many important roles he plays such as foreign secretary, race-horse owner, and ceo.
- Analyzes the narrator's philosophy of why men have superiority complexes. she insists that women are merely a mirror image of men.
- Analyzes how the narrator is optimistic about the status of women despite her findings.
- Analyzes how the narrator continues her investigation of women in literature. she ponders what life for women was like during the elizabethan age, and questions why no women wrote great literature during that time.
- Analyzes how the narrator agrees with his analysis. she points out that great women like cleopatra, lady macbeth, and phaedra were all powerful women, but in real life they were not part of history.
- Analyzes how the narrator continues to ponder the life of an elizabethan woman. she is disturbed that she cannot find any literature about a woman during that era.
- Analyzes how the narrator recalls a bishop's comment that no woman could equal the genius of shakespeare.
- Analyzes how the narrator agrees with the bishop that no women of the time would have had such genius.
- Analyzes how the narrator concludes that it is the will of men to maintain their status that impedes women.
- Opines that the narrator is justified in her reasoning. men wield power from the weak and that common weakling is woman. without oppression from men there could have been many great female writers.
- Analyzes how woolf's satirical "a society" uses a series of characters to point out the follies of men.
- Analyzes how woolf uses symbols and imagery to describe the setting. she emphasizes the women's naivety and converses about men.
- Narrates how they drew round the fire and began as usual to praise men--how strong, noble, brilliant, courageous, and beautiful they were --how we envied those who managed to get attached to one for life.
- Analyzes how the characters are content with their roles as women. they believe that everything written or created by men is creditable. poll bursts into tears.
- Analyzes how poll cites from several books she is carrying, and the other women are appalled at the content of the books. when poll reads them poetry they all agree that it is frivolous subject matter.
- Analyzes how clorinda concludes that it is women's fault. they acknowledge that living as wives and child bearers has blinded them from reality.
- Explains that the narrator and her friends decide to investigate for themselves what the world of men is like. they seek answers to their questions and report back to each other.
- Analyzes how woolf uses the women's reports to criticize the behavior of men. rose reports on her escapade on a navy vessel.
- Analyzes how the captain was angered by the fact that a woman snuck onto his vessel. woolf implies that men will go to any lengths to save face.
- Analyzes how fanny's account of her visit to the law courts was somewhat different. she concludes that the judges were inhuman.
- Analyzes how castalia describes professor hobkin's life as being that of leisure. she discovers his life work, which is an edition of sappho.
- Analyzes how woolf uses the question of sappho's chastity as a prominent feminine figure and the mystery surrounding her sexuality. castalia is not convinced that the professor knows anything about
- Analyzes how castalia appears glowing from within when she returns three months later. she reveals that she has been at oxbridge and is now pregnant.
- Analyzes how woolf raises the question of chastity in order to point out the follies of men.
1749 wordsRead More - In talking about Virginia Woolf in the context of Julia Duckworth Stephen and feminism, I will start from the beginning of Virginia Stephen’s life. The idea of ‘Mother’ is a basic, recognizable concept in probably even the most primitive human cultures. Infants start separation of self and other with the body of Mother, since an infant gains a sense of ‘continuity of being’ from his or her mother’s attention. (Rosenman 12) From this definition of relationship-as-self, an infant finds her existence confirmed by feedback from her mother. In this manner, Julia is the first contact for Virginia with the rest of the world, and with all of womankind. Since Virginia will go on to have most of her important relationships with women, this is an important connection.
In this essay, the author
- Explains rosenmann, ellen bayuk, the invisible presence: virginia woolf and the mother-daughter relationship.
- Explains that feminism is rooted in patriarchy and the history of females and their treatment of each other.
- Argues that julia stephen's feminism is a rebellion against "how the patriarchy represses women." julia showed her daughters that female behavior was meant to be helpful, caring, and moderately subservient
- Analyzes how virginia gives a snapshot of the circle around jacob's mother, betty flanders, and clarissa dalloway.
- Analyzes how virginia's "sapphist" tendencies took the pattern of virginia cuddling up to a woman’s lap, using the language of animals and petting that she learned in her childhood.
- Analyzes how virginia woolf's feminism is an evolution of her mother’s sentiments on equality. her father leslie stephen influenced her writing, but his domineering presence crippled her.
- Cites ingram, heather, and johnsen, william, in women's fiction between the wars. "virginia woolf: retrieving the mother."
2260 wordsRead More - Virginia Woolf's Postmodernist Film The Hoursanalytical essayThroughout history, the unique human capacity and social construction, has pondered the dynamic system of death, in a perverse moral order. Composite English modernism pioneered an intricately developed account of contemporary literature, summoning both the self-conscious and unrelenting experimenters. Virginia Woolf’s literary standings in Mrs Dalloway, marked her own sense of artistic independence and maturity. The novel explores a radical disruption of linear flow, whilst deploying ambiguous juxtapositions to call into question the philosophical realms of reality. On the other hand, Stephen Daldry’s postmodernist film, The Hours, measures the inter-textual connection, as it seamlessly intersects the lives of three different women, whose
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how virginia woolf's literary standings in mrs dalloway marked her artistic independence and maturity. daldry’s postmodernist film, the hours, measures the inter-textual connection.
141 wordsRead More - Male Gaze A Perpetual Motion Analysisanalytical essayThe heroines in both films also stand out for having remarkable professions, including the real estate, movie star, artist and writer, which is symbolic for defining women as the “maker of meaning”, rather than merely the “bearer of meaning” (Mulvey 305). Among these professions, the writer is outstanding for not only “narrat[ing] their life” (Marchetti 199), but implying their contributions to challenging the language system developed by males, which is quite significant in Mulvey’s view, because the language of patriarchy leads to the unconscious suppressing females. Although Laura Braun in the Hours leads a childbearing life, she keeps reading the novella of Woolf rather than the works by other male writers, which emphasizes on the significance of female's intervention in patriarchal language system and females as the important creator of the
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how the films juxtapose females as protagonists and career women, rather than identifying them as pure signifiers of the "male other." the heroines in both films stand out for having remarkable professions, including the real estate, movie star, artist, and writer.
- Analyzes how the perpetual motion subverts males as the object of the look and shows females' sexual and material desires.
- Analyzes how the hours attempts to position females as the center with subjectivity, but does not directly turn males into the desiree to rebel against the sexual power asymmetry like the perpetual motion.
- Analyzes the similarities and differences between the perpetual motion and the hours, which portrays female subjectivity and opposes patriarchal conventions.
- Compares the perpetual motion's fetishistic scopophilia with that of the hours, which is still under the male-oriented hollywood system.
1214 wordsRead More - Similarities Between Mrs. Dalloway And The Hoursanalytical essaydepressed, and unhappy housewife and mother in 1949; and Clarissa Vaughn, an editor who’s preparing an awards party for her AIDS-stricken ex-lover and best friend, Richard Brown, in 2001. All three women in one form or another suffer from an extreme form of depression, known as melancholy. Illustrating the events, the women face in only one day, ultimately serves immense significance to the lives of the characters. The Hours, uses additional characters to portray the parallels of suicide and mental illness between the novel and film as well as to express the depth of the personal relationship within the two.
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how the hours uses additional characters to portray the parallels of suicide and mental illness between the novel and film.
- Compares the suicides of septimus warren smith and richard brown in mrs. dalloway and the hours. both men viewed death as the only viable escape from the insanity of their lives.
- Analyzes how septimus warren smith suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and is married to lucrezia smith. he experiences hallucinations of officer evans, a friend of his and commanding officer, who died on the battlefield.
- Compares virginia woolf and septimus in mrs. dalloway, who commit suicide by drowning herself in a river. leonard and rezia seek different remedies to treat their melancholic spouse.
- Explains that septimus, richard, and virginia suffer from melancholia, a major depressive episode in which all the symptoms are prevalent in all three characters.
- Analyzes how the british journal of psychiatry published a study which compared suicide attempts associated with melancholic versus non-melanchol major depression in 377 patients. the three suffer from hallucinations, hear voices, and weigh their inner worlds.
1214 wordsRead More