I saw the movie The Hours when it came out in 2002 and it really spoke to me. I decided to read The Hours (a 1998 novel by Michael Cunningham) and found that I really enjoyed the book as well as the movie. The set-up was a little challenging, as there are three stories that are connected in the book and with the character of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. I should say that I also enjoyed Mrs. Dalloway, which I will talk about in an upcoming post.
If you are looking for a light, happy read – this is not the book for you. It is a bit depressing. The three main characters are women grappling with a sense of inadequacy and frustration … or something even stronger. Maybe because I have recently read a couple of other books in which the characters were depressed, lack confidence, or are otherwise emotionally/psychologically challenged that I was a little impatient for them to succeed, pull themselves together, and getting on with things. Maybe I was impatient because their issues were “small” in the grand scheme of things. Maybe I was too literal in my dismissal of small issues. Maybe I did not give enough weight to the short timeline of the stories. Of course, my response was inappropriate – these women needed comforting and compassion and space to deal with the issues in their lives, both large and small.
The stories in The Hours were interesting – they were slices of a day in the life of these women. We meet Clarissa, Laura and Virginia, who are all feeling the challenges of their daily lives. Clarissa is preparing to give a party for a dear friend who is dying of AIDS. Laura is a 1950s housewife and mother who is trying to make her husband’s birthday special. Virginia (Woolf) is writing Mrs. Dalloway and contemplating suicide. On one hand, except for the suicidal thoughts, there was a mundaneness to their stories that made them understandable and relatable. Most of us have days focused on making our way through to-do lists of tasks that we don’t really want to do. Most of us have fantasies of escaping for awhile. I would even say that most of us probably dislike our lives from time to time – the “how did I end up here” days. Yet, this was also the most frustrating part of the book for me because I did not get the sense that these characters would/could move on. They seemed to get bogged down and make the small issues seem insurmountable. Yet, in the small tasks, we can find satisfaction, i.e., God is in the details. Or is it the devil that is in the details? These two options may be part of the problem for the women in the book – that there were good and bad aspects of their efforts and activities.
Intellectually, I understand this book and that the fact that these women were having a difficult time completing a series of actions that, on the surface, were simple but were made difficult because of the larger picture and contextual factors. Maybe because I am stressed out, these women just exhausted me! Maybe in the end, I can’t relate to being concerned about getting the right flowers for a party or making the perfect cake, even though their issues and problems were not really about the flowers and the cake. My small issues may be forcing myself to clean the kitchen or trying to get the laundry done or finding ways to engage my mother for a few hours. Virginia was the character to whom I could best relate – on a personal and professional level because I can relate to her task – writing. Although I liked the book and the stories, I found Clarissa and Laura to be challenging, as they seem to need attention to complete their tasks and feel rewarded. On the other hand, it seems all three women were in their own worlds and working to get through this one day and their to-do lists. I think I need to reread this book at some point because the more I think about it, I also am as I struggle with my to-do list.
