The Hours

I found that the movie The Hours was interesting, but not easy to watch. In one part, it was constantly switching between the three stories, making connections that you had to follow. This wasn't that hard to grasp and the way that the movie makers did it (with the different bouquets of flowers, for example) was creative and artistic. My main difficulty with the movie was how dark it was. As we discussed in class, the tone of the movie was significantly more depressing, starting from the very beginning where we see Virginia Woolf kill herself. As a whole , I think the reasons for this difference in tone are three-fold: first is the New York City setting as the backdrop for the Mrs. Dalloway story instead of the London backdrop of the book; second is the character of Richard, who seems to be a combined Peter, Septimus, etc; and third is the general depression and lack of zest for life of the characters as a whole.

So, the New York setting. I am a person who doesn't really like cities anyway, and in this movie New York was especially hostile and sad. The apartment building that Clarissa lived in was not as nice as Mrs. Dalloway's in the book, or even as nice as Clarissa's in The Hours. I pictured Mrs. Dalloway living in a kind of fancy hotel environment, and in the first scene you can see the grafitti on the walls of the builing and the iron gates that you have to open to get out of it. Because the filmakers set the movie in the winter, the harshness of the city is amplified. It is quite dark, with a blue tint rather than a gold one, making it seem sadder. The gray snow and the darkness of the interiors of the buildings, even the flower shop, also add to this feeling. The king of depressing settings is Richard's apartment. Frankly, it made me kind of queasy to see all of the piled up dishes and the shuttered windows and Richard in his robe and beanie cap just sitting there...Even though the book acknowledges that Septimus is deeply troubled and often thinks about death and other violent, dark things, his external environment is light and well-taken care of by his caring wife. Their walks in St. James's Park have a springlike quality to them, with children playing and women knitting. Their home, especially in the last scene before Septimus's suicide, seems warm and cozy. Richard's environment is much darker.

Richard's impact on the darkness of the story goes much further than his environment. He is called Richard (like Richard Dalloway), which brings to mind the stable, content husband of Mrs. Dalloway, who takes care of her and loves his daughter very much. However there are major parts of his character that belong to Septimus--namely the depression and the jumping out the window. There are also parts of his character that belong to Peter Walsh; he keeps up a steady stream of banter with Clarissa, yet he also seems to reveal to her parts of his character that he reveals to no one else. This character combination not only creates confusion, but also removes many of the characters who lightened the story from the scene. There is no Mr. Vaughn because he died, so there is no husband to take care of Clarissa and her daughter and to add an element of stability to the character's lives. There is also none of the serious playfulness (I know that's an oxymoron, but his attitude is difficult to describe) of Peter; no "Musing among the vegetables?", no impetuous declarations of love. In the movie there is just Richard, and some other male characters who don't seem to fit in quite anywhere. Virginia's husband might be considered a Richard figure, but I'll have to think about that one more.

Finally, there is the overall dysfunctional quality of all of the main characters. In a nutshell, all of them seem to be falling apart. Clarissa is freaking out about her party, about Richard, and about how everything in her life is trivial. Laura is completely depressed, can't even manage to make a cake, and then goes off to kill herself in a hotel room (although she never ends up doing it). Virginia is preoccupied with writing and her dark thoughts, and eventually ends up killing herself. It may not be nice, but I find it very difficult to be entirely sympathetic to people who are letting their lives go and who do not realize the value of it. I know that depression is a legitimate disease, but I still just want to say "pull it together and move on"! At various points in the movie, you could see the women and their lives just careening towards a breaking point...and it's not particularly fun to watch three train wrecks.

Overall, I feel that the movie took the darkness in the women's lives a little too far, by the end of the movie there was hope for them in their lives, and for others who sometimes feel as they did, but not much.

Septimus and Clarissa

Having just finished the part of the book where Septimus commits suicide, I’m having difficulty understanding where he fits into the story, and I wonder whether or not Rezia will reappear before the end of the book. His story seems unfinished and his place in the world that Woolf has created is unexplained. So why does Woolf include Septimus?

One reason we touched on in class is that Woolf included Septimus to provide a sane-insane comparison. This is too simplistic a reason; Woolf’s characters are too complex to be one thing or another--we cannot say that one character is “this”, and the other is “that”, to paraphrase Clarissa.

Other possible reason is that Woolf is trying to show how serious shell shock, or PTSD, actually was. Perhaps she believed that shell-shock was a real phenomenon that could entirely alter the lives of soldiers who come home from the war, despite the fact that most medical authorities of her generation dismissed the symptoms as weakness or cowardice. 

But what is the connection between Clarissa and Septimus? It seems like the two main characters should be connected in some way. Otherwise, why would you have two main characters? It’s possible that Woolf is making the point that Clarissa and Septimus are actually much more similar than they seem. Both of them feel trapped and oppressed: Clarissa by the disappearance of her own identity and her place in society, and Septimus by his memories of the war and his hallucinations. Clarissa questions the choices she has made in her life throughout the book. She wonders whether she has married the right man, or whether she could have lived her life in a more fulfilling way if she had tried. Septimus, meanwhile, questions the meaning of life in general. Finally, both are not fully engaged in the world at present. Clarissa is constantly reminiscing about her youth at Bourton and Septimus is caught up in his memories of Evans and the war. Perhaps Woolf is drawing a connection between the two characters to show the vestiges of insanity in the normal, respectable Mrs. Dalloway and the underlying sanity in Septimus. Perhaps she is blurring the borders of consciousness simply to show that borders are always blurred.

I hope Woolf ties up the loose ends of Septimus’s and Rezia’s story, and connects them concretely to Clarissa in some way. I can understand why she wouldn’t though, because then it would be more true to life. In life, suicide is almost never explained in full, and the stories of people who commit suicide are often never fully understood; perhaps Woolf will take this route and leave us all waiting for an explanation that will never be provided.

Mrs. Dalloway vs The Mezzanine

At the very beginning of our class discussions of Mrs. Dalloway, we discussed whether it was more or less difficult to read than The Mezzanine. My first impression was that it was far easier. Mrs. Dalloway flows in a way that The Mezzanine doesn’t; even though the sentences in Mrs. Dalloway jump from one idea to the next confusingly, and throw you into the story without giving you backstory, they seem less complex. The absence of footnotes also makes Mrs. Dalloway flow better—although the tangential footnotes in The Mezzanine are an important part of the book as a whole, they do interrupt the story itself.

As I have continued to read Mrs. Dalloway, I have found that it is more difficult to follow at some points than I thought when I first began. The first few pages were easy compared to the section on pages 55-57 about the solitary traveler.  The passage begins with the nurse who Peter Walsh sits by in the park: In her grey dress, her hands indefatigably yet quietly, she seemed like the champion of the rights of sleepers, like one of those spectral presences which rise in twilight in woods made of sky and branches.” This part works for me. I can even see what Woolf means, so she is succeeding in giving me a better idea of character. Woolf continues “The solitary traveler, haunter of lanes, disturber of ferns, and devastator of great hemlock plants, looking up, suddenly sees the giant figure at the end of the ride.” Woolf drifts off into a lengthy an philosophical description of “the solitary traveler”, and I am lost. This section is just as tangential as Baker’s footnotes; it interrupts from the main story, but probably gives some in depth examination of life, character, or plot that is difficult to understand. In a way, Virginia Woolf’s story can be even more difficult to understand than Baker’s.

Nevertheless, I find that Woolf’s story is much more enjoyable. I look forward to reading it, while pushing through The Mezzanine was a struggle. Neither style of writing can be considered easy to read. Mrs. Dalloway is in no way less philosophical than The Mezzanine; if anything, it is more so. However, Woolf addresses character as if she is providing you with little snapshots of people, and this makes all the difference. Although it seems strange to liken a famous literary novel to a tabloid magazine, the tiny descriptions of characters like Scrope Purvis, Mr. Bowley, and Maisie Johnson are very similar to the photographs of stars going about their daily lives that are found on the first few pages of magazines like People and OK!. These magazines are not high literature, but they are interesting (at least for a little while) because people like to know about other people.  We all like to know how other people are doing in their lives, and most people like gossip.  Virginia Woolf is onto something with her idea that character is more important, and the snapshots of character that she provides make Mrs. Dalloway far more interesting, despite the lack of action or excitement.

What Makes Art?

In The Mezzanine, Baker is clearly making the point that the trivial things in life are important, that they make up the bulk of everyday experience. To do this, he makes Howie ponder many of the objects that he encounters in the course of his lunch hour. Of course, Howie wouldn’t have the time to ponder all of the experiences that make up his lunch hour in such depth as he rides up an escalator. He would not have been able to take everyday objects out of context (straws, ties, shoelaces) to think about how they were invented and their particular attributes that he likes or dislikes. However, in his book, Baker can take the objects out of context and make the point that even though they are things that are around us everyday, they are art. Baker not only suggests that trivial things matter, but art is all around us all the time even though we don’t usually notice it.

    So, my question is, are trivial objects taken out of context really art? The Oxford dictionary’s first definition of art is “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power”. The objects that Baker talks about are not paintings or sculptures, but they are human inventions that required skill and imagination to create. If people appreciated these seemingly unartful objects for their beauty and emotional power, then perhaps they are art (which is the point that Baker makes). For most of us, everyday objects probably aren’t art, and maybe we would feel happier about our lives if we saw every little thing as a creative effort worthy of our attention.

    But then, the idea of taking objects out of context brings to mind modern art. For me at least, much of modern art is very obscure. It requires time and effort to understand modern art (any art actually, but modern art is notoriously difficult to decipher). Modern art is an experiment. So is all art valuable? To paraphrase Mr. Mitchell, people hang a urinal on the wall and call it art. According to Baker’s ideas, it is art, and should be appreciated for its beauty and functionality. But I don’t know. There are many ways to justify the idea that all art is valuable; people are trying new things, making you think about things a different way, taking you out of your comfort zone. But I still have reconciling the ideas of art and everyday items. I do not think I could see the beauty of a urinal, even if it was hanging on a solid white wall in a gallery, just as I do not see the beauty and usefulness of a spatula every time I make a fried egg. Maybe I should look closer, but really, there are other things I'd rather spend my time on.