MCorte - Modernism and Postmodernism - THE HOURS

 

The Hours is a novel by Michael Cunningham. It tells about three stories of three different women in three decades of the twentieth century. The main characters are connected by a novel Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. The first character is still Virginia Woolf that ,in 1923, is writing the same novel; in Los Angeles in 1951 Laura Brown reads the novel and choose to leave her previous life; in 2001 at New York , Clarissa Vaughn is called Mrs Dalloway by her friend Richard and her story reminds of the plot of Woolf's novel.
This novel has been indicated as example of Postmodern novel. Starting from the title it reminds to the original title of Mrs Dalloway, the connecting novel of the three stories. The title also refers to the concept of time and fragmentation: the narration is collocated in a little time period(just one day)but this brief time is divided and organized in the unit of time of the hours.
The stories takes place in an unique city or town that are the only settings of the plot. The time of the story is just one day and it follows chronological order, even if there is continuous change from one story's woman to another. These features of the novel reminds of both the Modernist and Postmodernist novel: the characters have a travel in limited space and time so their travel is mainly psychological as space and time(is only present and there are not descriptions of past or future). For that reason the storyline is not complex and the facts of the plot are quite few because author focus more on character's thoughts.
In The Hours the narrator adopted indirect and free style and reported speech: the author uses to report his character's telling, thoughts and sentences. Author is omniscient because he knows everything about his character's thoughts and feelings and he uses to filter the narration inserting some personal comments even if not as traditional novels where author uses to be directly involved in the narration. In fact the author just inserts little comments(even with use of brackets) using some language connectors revealing his presence. Narrative techniques of the author are stream of consciousness and particulary interior monologue, that is reporting people's thought with free indirect style; moreover it is not total stream of consciousness because reported thoughts are not casual and they follow a logical order in thought's characters.
The narrator uses mainly simple present to narrate the stories since that verb makes concreteness and stability but also it is for expressing fixed and common actions of daily routine.
Main themes of the novel reminds to the interior quarrel of the characters, as in the Modernist novel and most at all Mrs Dalloway: in one day characters have a psychological travel about their existences and the way they are living( as example Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and Joyce's Ulisses). The novel takes also some particular themes of the last decades as homosexual love since three main women are lesbian and they have an homosexual kiss. According to the decade they live it changes how they interact with this aspect: while Mrs Woolf and Mrs Brown have to hide this type of love, Mrs Dalloway has not any matter to live together with a woman(she lives in some years where is not omoxesuality is not more seen as a sin. The novel discusses also the constraint of social roles of the women, in particular Laura Brown that is frustrated by her fixed family life but she will save herself only after the lecture of Mrs Dalloway. In last one aspect it emerges that is the meta literature theme of the novel: in these separated stories the only connecting point is a novel that changes their lifes and choices, this reminds of the postmodernist discussion about the role of literature and how the novel can influence the life of individual. The novel is discussed as new way to reflection for the people.
In my opinion this novel was quite particular but I don't know how much I like. Due I read it in English have made some difficulties but I don't mean it was so difficult. I haven't read it in Italian up to now but it would be surely different my approach to this novel if I read in Italian. Maybe I could read again this novel mostly due to the various discussions about it in school. I quite like the characters, maybe I prefer Virginia Woolf but I can't explain why.
After the vision of the film based on the novel I can say it was a very good movie, made very correctly. Movie's directing and actors was really very good. I think it respects atmosphere of the novel and also the characterizations of the characters, that made me feel the same impression about them when I read the novel.