from Virginia Woolf's suicide note to Leonard Woolf. 'I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.'.Leonard Woolf, her husband, finds her suicide note, and Virginia's dead body floats downstream where life continues as normal. Even as she is drowning, Virginia marvels at everyday sights and sounds. In 1941, Virginia Woolf commits suicide by drowning herself in the Ouse, a river in Sussex, England. Through these three women, Cunningham attempts, as did Woolf, to show the beauty and profundity of every day a person's life and, conversely, how a person's whole life can be examined through the lens of one single day.Ĭunningham took the novel's title, The Hours, from the original working title that Virginia Woolf used for Mrs. Cunningham's novel contains one day in the life of each of the three central characters Clarissa Vaughan, Laura Brown, and Virginia Woolf herself. Dalloway is one day in the life of the central character Clarissa Dalloway. Dalloway, Cunningham's novel places the entire story within one day. This means that characters interact not only with the present, but also with past memories this contextualizes personal history and backstory, which otherwise might appear quite trivial-buying flowers, baking a cake, and such things. Dalloway's stream-of-consciousness narrative style, which was pioneered by Woolf and James Joyce, in which the flowing thoughts and perceptions of protagonists are depicted as they would occur in real life.

Several other characters in Clarissa Vaughan's story also parallel characters in Woolf's Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway and Clarissa Vaughan also both contrast their histories and past loves with their current lives, which they both perceive as trivial.

Dalloway, Clarissa Vaughan goes on a journey to buy flowers while reflecting on the minutiae of the day around her and later prepares to throw a party. Dalloway, with Clarissa Vaughan being a modern-day version of Woolf's character. The situations of all three characters mirror situations experienced by Woolf's own Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs. In 1999 New York City, Clarissa Vaughan plans a party to celebrate a major literary award received by her good friend and former lover, the poet Richard, who is dying of an AIDS-related illness. Dalloway while planning a birthday party for her husband, a World War II veteran. In 1949 Los Angeles, Laura Brown is reading Mrs.

Dalloway and struggling with her mental illness. In 1923 Richmond, outside London, author Virginia Woolf is writing Mrs. The book concerns three generations of women affected by the classic novel Mrs. Portrait of Virginia Woolf, British author and feminist

Vanities by Gail Z. Martin