Occupied with working on my graduate school applications and apartment hunts, desperately desiring the escape into Fiction, the World of the Imagination, I found myself pondering about Laura Brown's position in Michael Cunningham's The Hours. I wondered why Laura Brown is written into the novel. What is her role? Is she necessary?
Of all the characters in the novel, Laura Brown was the one I liked the most. Virginia seemed too absorbed and convoluted, which isn't necessarily bad, but these qualities did place a barrier between the reader and the writer. Clarissa seemed too giving, too mellow, and rather superficial in her ability to erase any discomfort she might feel.
Virginia is a character struggling with her Art: for she is an artist first and foremost. For that character to find happiness, she must have the freedom to write, a room of her own, which is denied her when her husband removes her away from the sparkling brilliance of London into the dreary confines of a country estate, for the sake of a "rest cure", an attempt to cure her mania. Virginia, despite her struggles, is a great novelist for she works hard at her craft, as if it is the only thing that matters.
Clarissa, with her poise, demeanor, and connections to the rich and famous, appears rather shallow at first. Although she does exhibit having experienced the semblance of an "awakening" by the end, I found the effect quite flat. Whereas she had been previously satisfied with giving lavish dinner parties, entertaining famous people, and being faithful to her long-term lover Sally, her "unraveling" to Louis, and Richard's catastrophic death have shown her that it is the moment that matters, that everything else is secondary. Though Clarissa is shocked by her friend--and ex-boyfriend's--sudden demise, she does not weep and in fact, a part of her contemplates suicide. But only for a fleeting moment. We later see her, after hearing Laura Brown's confession, making love to Sally, who has had her own awakening, values her partner, and is eager to reignite the flames of their relationship. But what has changed for Clarissa? Will she be satisfied with her relationship with Sally? Will she continue to give lavish parties? Will she accept her daughter's friendship with a working-class woman? More importantly, how much will she want?
Laura Brown is in between these two characters, quite literally, as is shown on the DVD and book cover. Laura Brown is neither as absorbed in her work as Virginia, nor is she superficially satisfied as is Clarissa. Whereas Virginia commits suicide and Clarissa mildly contemplates it, Laura comes within inches of taking her own life, only to disregard the thought, with a momentary lapse in time. While Virginia dies and Clarissa lives, Laura is caught being both dead and alive: she "dies" when she leaves her life of being a suburban mother and she lives when she creates a life of her own in Toronto, away from family responsibilities. It is Laura's nearness to death that brings her closer to Virginia than Clarissa, as is shown in her proximity to Virginia in the DVD cover.
But what is Laura Brown's role in The Hours? She is Richard's mother and Richard influences Clarissa. Richard's earlier experiences with Laura are described in the book and they have no doubt influenced the boy as he became a writer. So one possibility is that Richard's ability to write is a result of Laura's influence on him, his witnessing her depression, and along with it, her desire, a desire potent enough to destroy the structure of the family. Aside from being Richard's mother, Laura also is the link between Virginia and Clarissa. Unlike Clarissa, it is Laura who is obsessed with Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia's novel. After she has learnt to find peace in a moment and to seek her freedom through her reading of the novel, she conveys this message to Clarissa. Clarissa now knows that it is possible to "look life in the face, always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is...at last, to love it for what it is, and then to put it away.". Maybe this message could only be transferred from one female onto another, and therefore Richard would not suffice. As the DVD cover shows, Laura is in a row behind both Clarissa and Virginia, thus signifying her function as a link between the other two women. Her position also reveals a hierarchy, in that she seems subordinate to both Virginia and Clarissa. Perhaps this "position" addresses the very question I posed about Laura Brown's role in the beginning of this essay: How important is Laura in relation to the other two?
Could the novel survive without Laura Brown? I believe not. For if that were the case, there would be no Richard Brown and no one to influence Clarissa. In short, we wouldn't have a story.
Could Laura survive on her own? I am not sure. She tries to live on her own, she deserts her family, choosing life over death. But what sort of life is that? Did she not feel remorse, guilt at what she has done? Could her newly-discovered freedom compensate for what she had left behind? By writing Laura as he had done so in the novel, Cunningham empowers and disenfranchises her at the same time. She is powerful in that she has access to the past as well as the future: Virginia writes the character of Mrs. Dalloway but it is Laura who can physically touch this character. Conversely, Laura knows two Mrs. Dalloways: one from Virginia's novel and one from real-life and it is because of Laura that the two can merge for Laura is the reader, the interpreter of Virginia's novel.
Though powerful, she is also trapped. Cunningham has placed her in two worlds: she inhabits in the past and the future at the same time. Even though she approves of her leaving her family, she is reminded of her position as a mother, one who hurt her family, when Richard dies, a position that will be branded on her all her life.
Paradoxically, Laura Brown, a woman who seeks her own freedom is trapped by Cunningham's writing her into his story.
7 comments:
Lovely!
I read the book back in early 2003 so my memory of it is a little blurry.
I remember being very tense when I read Laura's bits - the impossible balance between what she has and what she wants. The movie captures the scene in the hotel room so well, so powerfully too.
Your great post makes me wich I could comment more elaborately but I don't dare, I'd be treading on thin ice having read the book so long ago.
How did you like it right after Mrs Dalloway?
Oh your comments would be totally welcome, even if you don't remember the book that well :)
I found The Hours a lot more refreshing after reading Mrs. Dalloway. Again, since my reading of the latter was spotty as a result of other commitments that week, I think it requires a re-read in order for me to give a fair opinion.
However, based on the first reading of Mrs. Dalloway, I confess I found it very tedious and the characters some what passive, confusing, and rather weak. What I did find interesting, though, was Clarissa's reaction toward her daughter's governess ;)
I didn't grasp the part about Septimus and his ramblings (though Richard Brown in "The Hours" proved much more effective than Septimus). Somehow the world of "Mrs. Dalloway" seemed very strange to me: the parties, the upper-class concerns of the the early twentieth-century and such. I would have liked more inner conflict, more action, more drama, more vivid imagery.
Perhaps I am just starting to get used to the Modernists ;)
But, I am liking Woolf's "The Waves" a great deal!
What I liked about the characters in Mrs Dalloway is how thoroughly British they are. Their inner world is indeeed full of conflicting emotions, yet outwardly they hardly show a thing. See, for instance, Clarissa's relationship with her husband.
I also liked London just after the war. Septimus is shell-shocked (?) and I found the description of his madness very moving and violent at the same time. If I recall correctly he is said to hear birds talking in Greek, which was one of the first symptoms of a breakdown for Virginia Woolf herself, so I guess part of the madness is based on her own breakdowns - so it's all very real.
I haven't read The Waves yet. I don't even have it.
I do think I'll read Mrs. Dalloway again and this time I might have a different opinion.
However, how I feel about the book, could have more to do with regard to the writing than the characterization or the plot.
I love this interpretation of Laura Brown! To offten is she considered a selfish person and an awful mother with no room for arguement by her accusers. This portrait of her and the analysis of the front cover are really extraordinary and right on target. Bravo!!
the analysis is great, but you must also not forget the obvious. Laura Brown, at least for me, is the key character in the novel. Her parts are the most haunting, poignant, and revealing of all the three. Virginia was an artist. Clarissa, was content. However, Laura wanted more than freedom. She wanted to be either Virginia or Clarissa. She wanted greatness. She wanted to be more than who she was. When she couldn't do that, she wanted to be Clarissa. She wanted to know what that happiness and selflessness was like.
Instead, she was like the majority of us. She was trying to create a life that had more meaning that it did. The scene with the cake is so fitting because it was something so small and simple and she wanted to turn that simplicity into artistry. And she wanted to be a good mother and a good wife, but found herself so misplaced in those roles. Her suicide and then departure was her trying to escape, not her family, but herself: her limitations and her failures.
However, as ordinary as she was, she continued living. And as average as she lived, her life yielded greatness in Richard. You are able to see how people's lives are so intricately connected. How life, in all it's setbacks and failures, pain and disappointments, manages to seduce and capture us or ruin us. And no matter who lives or who dies, the days continue on, and those living and those dead continue to shape lives.
Virginia was poetic in her greatness, Clarissa in her happiness, and Laura in her mediocrity.
I have been inthralled with Laura Brown. Thank you for your words.
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