Evanescence
As each moment in time passes by, it is hard not to re-live one’s own past experiences and ask the universal question of “What if?” For that one split second, change, however immense or trivial, seems possible. Perhaps it isn’t destined for one to live the life of the dutiful wife or the battered girlfriend. In reality, however, big changes come hand in hand with action and some people are unable to break free. Those who do manage to escape are haunted by their decisions, and the same “what ifs” continue to linger in their minds. The key to fully grasping life is to have tried to find “and utterly, soulfully be” (Curb) oneself without regret. These are the themes that Virginia Woolf explores in Mrs. Dalloway with her stream of consciousness stylized writing. Woolf introduces the reader to the world of her novel with the simple statement of “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself” (Woolf 3). The reader is led through the major events of Clarissa Dalloway’s entire life in the span of a single day. Dalloway experiences similar “what ifs” while planning a party on that sunny, warm June day. Regret pours into Dalloway’s soul when her old love, Peter Walsh, walk back into her life. Curiosity enters Dalloway’s mind once again when she questions her sexual orientation. Despair consumes Dalloway when she realizes that her daughter, Elizabeth, adores the heartless, communist supporting Ms. Kilman. The wonder of what could have been runs through Dalloway’s mind constantly as her train of thought jumps from one track to another. These minute digressions all dissipate one after the other, until the news of Septimus Warren Smith’s suicidal death reaches Dalloway’s quaint party. Writing three quarters of a century later, and basing himself on Woolf’s original idea, Michael Cunningham writes about the “what ifs” of three women living in different time periods in the 20th century in his novel The Hours. At first glance, Cunningham’s novel may appear to be “an updated, postmodernist Mrs. Dalloway” (Krishnaswamy), but it goes far beyond paying homage to a celebrated author. In his novel, Cunningham “draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, life and death, creation and destruction” (Mullan). In doing so, he paints the three women, Virginia Woolf, Laura Brown, and Clarissa Vaughn, as living, breathing characters driven by the past, present, and future. By grasping the contents of Woolf’s life and work while masterfully cutting through the boundaries of time between characters, Cunningham creates a work of his own called The Hours. Woolf emphasizes the importance of viewing a character in all dimensions of his or her life before applying judgment. While Dalloway may exude the personality of a perfect hostess, “Septimus, her double, exhibits the negative of this emotion, a despair which finally drives him to plunge to his death on the area railing” (Richter 218).