Giulia Lovison

Classe 5^C

LAURA BROWN’S CHARACTERISATION

Focusing on her name comes out two things: the surname “Brown” is ordinary and typical, instead the name “Laura” is typical of the courteous code. So, I think this character seems ordinary but just in her appearance, then this conflict between name and surname makes me guess she’s in conflict with herself.

Infact this hypothesis is confirmed. Laura Brown is always in conflict between her inner self, her inner desires and intentions and the role she has to fit in society. Her needs had been subordinated to sense of duty and obligation to her family (being a good mother and wife to give Dan something back, having him saved the world). Consequently, she feels frustrated, unsatisfied and experiences a continuous  sense of dislocation.

Therefore she feels trapped by the constraints of her role and is aware of the possibility of suicide. For a moment this idea seduces her and she tries to kill herself in a hotel but she feels she is not able to do it. She knows about her problems in life and believes that a constructed behavior can be a solution.

She is mainly showed: a particular Cunningham’s technique is to let characters express themselves with narration communicating their feelings and thought, not only in dialogues which in this novel tell just their appearance.

She’s linked to the other’s novel characters: Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway and Richard. Apparently she’s just a Virginia Woolf novel “Mrs. Dalloway” reader, but in truth she’s Richard mother, the man Clarissa Vaugh (Mrs. Dalloway’s concrete personification) fell in love to.  In her trapped life, Virginia Woolf’s novel is the only thing to let her escape from.

Her impression on the other character isn’t the best at first. Indeed, Clarissa, her cohabitant Sally and her daughter Julia define her like “the monster” because she’s abandoned Richard, his sister and his dad. But, after a talking with, Clarissa starts pursing her differently: she’s been constricted to escape because her life was such a prison to not have any other choices, or to escape from moving to somewhere else and deleting her past or to die. But with reference to the second possibility, as she might try, she would never be able. Indeed, it hasn’t been a case she’s chosen an hotel to try: a place symbolic of transit but not sustainability.

Another character she’s in contact with is her friend Kitty, a popular woman unable to have children. Laura is like her alter ego and one would like to be the other woman.

Two are the predominant novel’s themes: life and death and time.

So, because I’ve already dealt the first one, I’ll focus on the second. As regards time, Laura is the past character because she’s collocated in Los Angeles  1949, but she represents the future. Indeed she’s always making projections in the next hours, this due to her unsatisfaction.

The most symbolic element of this sadness is her cake. Laura wants the one she’s baked for Dan to fulfill her desire of being a perfect mother, cook, and housewife. Even if she knows that something concrete can’t provide her the satisfaction she needs. Although she tries to convince herself  the first cake she’s made has turned out well, she decides to throw it out and make a second one. Even if this is better, it isn’t perfect as she’s already imagined.

Then she becomes irritated when this last one is ruined after Dan spits on it as he blows out the candles. No matter what she does, how passion and commitment, Dan and Richard will be there to “ruin” whatever she produces. The cake forces Laura to consider the idea that just having a family will not be enough for her.

In conclusion, this is a very dramatic character who explains the constricted role a woman had in society many years ago. And, like everything, the novelist communicates there were just to solutions: getting rid but making people all around sad, or dying.