Comparison between Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway and Michael Cunningham’s one The hours.

MRS. DALLOWAY, Virginia Woolf

The novel’s title Mrs. Dalloway let think about a social status: the character is a married woman. The beginning is given in medias res because she’s going to buy flowers. So the reader finds out she likes flower, lives in a house with servants and the discussion’s centre is the house itself. Developing by narrative choices, the narrator wants to tell the first woman’s name, Clarissa, making the reader wondering about why it is more important than her wife’s one. And then, from her exclamations comes out she likes nature (“What a morning!”, “What a plunge!”).

All these points are filtered by a third person omniscient narrator who knows even what she thinks. It’s used the free style and the narrator sounds eclipsed but he’s there in the textual  “for”, which implies there’s one who tell you something, and the other conjunction, like “and”, comas and dots. Therefore the reader seems to be in Clarissa’s mind.

THE HOURS, Michael Cunningham

The situation is the same as Mrs. Dalloway’s one, but the reader perceives what Clarissa’s still going to do. (to buy flowers).There is a third person narrator who adopts Clarissa’s point of view, using the free reported speech.  So Clarissa’s thoughts are free from punctuation and are indirect because of the reported speech and therefore there’s someone who reports them, the narrator. For these reasons he is omniscient because knows everything about her: her actions and even whatever is in her mind, giving a judgment about her. In this incipit, the narrator’s filter is more emphasized because tells the reader she’s pretending and puts his judgment in brackets.  Then, there’s a person who represent Lucy too: Sally. In this case, she’s cleaning the bathroom but there’s not an authority obliging her to do it, this because the context is changed.   

Conclusion

The effect on the reader in Michael Cunningham’s novel is totally different from Virginia Woolf’s one. This because of the aspect of the verb, that is what makes the reader reflect on the significant image, conveyed by that particular aspect. Indeed Cunningham uses the simple aspect, so he gives concreteness and stability to his speech, giving veracity. Instead, in Virginia Woolf’s one there are both simple and progressive aspects, that is the reader feels a certainty and reality, but even something fugitive and dynamic.