The Hours: What's Happening?

My first impression of the novel/movie was rather distasteful. The constant jumping around three different perspectives not only confused me, but also made me lose track of the connections between Virginia Woolf and the story being told in The Hours.

After some post-review, many of the small things in the movie began to give light to new connections. In the movie, Woolf seems disconnected from yet trapped in the world around her and writing Mrs. Dalloway is an outlet for her "wild side". The Clarissa in the movie is perhaps the Clarissa that took the path not taken by the original. The most important differences between the Clarissa in The Hours and the Clarissa in Mrs. Dalloway is, one, she marries a woman, and two, Richard (who, in Mrs. Dalloway, was married to Clarissa) is the character with disease that prevents him from going out. 

Going back to my previous post where I mention that Clarissa's choice in marrying Richard Dalloway cannot be judged fairly because the reader does not know what would have happened if Clarissa took a different path, I believe The Hours attempts to portray a different path that Clarissa took.

The third perspective (the first and second being the perspective of Virginia Woolf and the perspective of Clarissa, in no particular order) is from a woman named Laura Brown who is reading the novel, Mrs. Dalloway. The way she acts is completely mysterious, but as the movie progressed, I felt the vibe that Laura was applying situations from Clarissa's relationships to her own. For example, when Laura's neighbor, Kitty, arrives at her house for a favor, Laura sees confidence masking the Kitty's true feelings, so Laura kisses her, which may be Laura perceiving her neighbor as a Clarissa-like entity who is hiding many things and needs reassurance in her life. The importance of this perspective is that it reflects the effect the novel, Mrs. Dalloway, has on people's perceptions.

The three different plots working in conjunction provides a thorough portrayal of Clarissa Dalloway, and leaves it to the viewer to decide which choices Clarissa should have made throughout her life: whether to live with her first lover, or whether to choose to live the epitome of a standard middle/upper-class life.