RE-DRAFTING CLASS TEXT

How does Laura Brown’s characterization work in the text?

Why does the novelist choose to privilege the female gender?

         “The Hours”, written by M. Cunningham is structured in a dedication, two quotations, a prologue and different chapters, named with three women’s names (Mrs. Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, Mrs. Woolf). As a result of the organization into chapters, the female gender emerges as the privileged. In my opinion the novelist’s choice is supported by several reasons.

In the first place women allow the writer to examine the controversial relationship between life and death. Since women’s specificity is to be life givers, it is interesting to present the other side of their nature. Decentralization of women’s ordinary nature also refers to postmodern worldview, which deny the existence of an unique truth.

In the second place, women are they who better react to ordinary and non-ordinary matters in a psychological and physical way. Consequently, a deep sight into the characters’ inner reality can be suggested. In particular the writer focuses on different perspectives on life: the beginning of a day, the celebration of an event, the meeting with a friend, the possibility of die. As a result women’s complexity comes out by means of plurality of their views, parallelism in the dealing with a shared problem and distinction of solution they find. Differences and similarities of three characters, together with an interpretative open reading based on the connection of their thoughts, propose the singularity and uniqueness of the female gender.

Last but not least, the choice can be aimed at the expression of the novelist’s female approach toward the world. So, the novel introduces the writer’s female nature to his partner, whose it is dedicated.

              Among female characters presented in the novel, Laura Brown is the one I felt more involved with. We share a common approach to world, a similar way of reading reality and answer to it.

Despite my personal sympathy with her, Laura Brown has a conceptual relevance in the whole novel. At the beginning of the reading, she seems connected to other women as a reader of “Mrs. Dalloway”, which is written by Virginia Woolf and acted by Clarissa Vaugham. The common condition of the reader may also be responsible for my identification with Laura.

At the end of the novel, the reader clearly understands that she is connected to “Mrs. Dalloway” in a logic way: she is Richard’s mother, whose tormented life affected Clarissa’s reflections in a sunny day of June. In a subtle way she origins the possibility for Virginia to create the novel. So she can be connected to Eve in the Bible.

Laura Brown’s characterizations is based on the technique of showing: the readers looks at her behavior, listens to her worlds and enter her mind. As a result I was free to interpret her complexity. The narrative device, which most drew me up to Laura, was the interior monologue: her flux of associations, considerations and future plans were just known by her and the reader. As a result of that, I felt a considerable sympathy with her loneliness. As expressed by interior monologues, she lives in the dimension of the mind, her inner personality is mysterious and not revealed. Since the reader knows her thoughts and sees her actions, it is possible to catch the shift between aspirations and desires and reality. That is Laura’s specificity and complexity. Consequently Laura’s identity is difficult to define, she has multiple selves and sometimes feels a ghost. Her identity problem is reveled through the way she lives space and time. Dislocations and alientations are frequent and reveal her impossibility to recognize part of her life. For instance, she has to move from her house to an anonymous hotel in order to read a book: her house is a trap, in which she is a mother, a wife but she needs to be just a reader. Furthermore she lives time in a deep psychological way. Despite she rigorously organizes the day, she is out of it. The frequent use of stream of consciousness, explains her complex approach to time: she fear her past, maybe because her decisions had bad effects on her present life; she tries to control her present but without much success; she is projected in the future, in the possibility of change.

Laura’s characterization is also conducted by relations she has with other characters.

As a mother, she has no natural inclination to deal with her son, she is sometimes scared about his questions: her approach is disorganized.  As a wife, she married Dan for friendship and because he loved her; as a result she cannot live a satisfactory life together. Her role in family shows Laura’s social exclusion: she does not fit social conventions. A tentative of escape her social position is well-shown by her kiss to Kitty: she does not love her but she feels sympathy to her condition.

Consequently of relationships she has, Laura Brown, as other female characters in the novel, is an isolated character: nobody really understand her.

Examination of her approach to death is also relevant to understand her complexity. In addition existence is a central theme in the novel.

Laura knows about the possibility to commit suicide, she knows great women, such as Virginia Woolf, did it. But when she can do it, she decides that is not her choice because she is pregnant, so her nature is productive. Despite she is the only character in the novel, who clearly decides the continuity of life instead of the inevitability of death, she is defined as the woman of death. In my opinion the fundamental choice Laura does is supported by her approach to world. Since she evades from problems and she has the strength to change and start up a new life because she is projected in the possibility to have a better future, she goes on living.

         All in all Mrs. Brown is a deep, complex, moving character, which makes me reflect on the efficiency of my way of standing reality.