Woolf's biography, and the movie The Hours - Essay Example

A Reading Response on ‘The Hours’, V. Woolf’s Biography, and Two Short Stories A disturbed genius in the fragile sphere of her intense poetic realism, V. Woolf would perhaps invariably earn the critical yet revering acclaim of history for a writing intellectual whose major part of psychological struggle has flown through the veins of most of her main characters. In the case of Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway, it is Clarissa Dalloway who assumes such role as to convey Virginia’s vivid attribute of keen awareness about her mental condition and the self-worthlessness that results to impact social relations of Mrs. Dalloway. Other than the latter, Woolf’s separate creation of the short story ‘The New Dress’ likewise presents Mabel, who through looking-glass suddenly sees the excruciating reality of her extreme sense of dissatisfaction or the seemingly spellbound misery in being severely insecure toward the society’s judgment of the way she dresses.

‘The Hours’ explores this theme of coping with a psychological challenge in an attempt to retain the sanity as Julian Moore portrays the pregnant Laura Brown who appears to feel cursed with her state of unhappiness upon married life after the World War II despite living the American dream. She finds huge relevance in reading the story of Mrs. Dalloway in her prevailing situation and consequently abandons her family -- a form of escape she deems as urgent necessity. At this point, while V.

Woolf via Nicole Kidman’s portrayal is trapped in the 1920’s setting of her English home which depicts much of her manner of trying to stay alive for husband Leonard, L. Brown in the same way endeavors to survive with the established norm. When she no longer could bear it however, her decision to turn her back to such dreary existence is a means to leave an ensuing madness that has already initiated the tendency to disrupt in her as it does to Woolf who, at the end of the film, commits suicide by drowning herself at the River Ouse in 1941 to perhaps let the flowing waters dissolve all her personal intolerable maddening.

Equivalently, Clarissa Vaughan through Meryl Streep in the movie can be readily likened to Mrs. Dalloway herself and friend poet-writer Richard would address Vaughan as such for the striking semblances between their lives. This is in reference to the party Mrs. Dalloway is to host come evening which parallels the social attitude of Vaughan with her serious preparations in considering to put up a gathering that aims to celebrate her gay friend’s reception of a career achievement award. If the reading film viewer happens to acquire a good recollection of the novel then a sensible point of comparison can be well drawn between Richard, who suffers from AIDS with enormous depression toward life due to loathsome beginnings and the shock-stricken Septimus as Dalloway’s equation who anxiously supposes that his soul is in danger with a doctor.

He and Richard are significantly close to Dalloway and Vaughan respectively and Virginia has translated into their common character type her mutual encounter of a recurring manic depression or bipolar disorder. Her reflection in them bears to the extent of Woolf’s chosen end in the act of preserving identity and sanity as echoed in the dreadful scenario when Richard and Septimus both throw themselves out of the window after feeling that the last thread of hope is snapped. Though V. Woolf and Richard have had worldwide exaltations due to their prominent intellects and crafts in writing and way of thought, still it does not seem to alleviate each from the austerities of living in utter discontent as does Oliver Bacon in ‘The Duchess and the Jeweller’.

Being the richest jeweler in England, as exhibited in the story, could never guarantee Bacon of ultimate satisfaction since, like Richard and Virginia, he would naturally be subject to an unconsciously attached weakness without remedy. His affections for the Duchess’s daughter Diana refers to an ailment that occurs way beyond his control or the power of his elite status, spontaneously enabling recurrence of lack of confidence with the sad memories of her boyhood in the dark alley. Anticipation of meaning and joy yet unidentified inevitably goes on, nevertheless, until Woolf lies on the verge of losing control over the remaining purity and soundness of rationalization which similarly applies to Oliver, a dissatisfied man who seeks something that is hidden, even though he had won his bet.