¶ … Hours
In her novel "Mrs. Dalloway," Virginia Woolf demonstrated a distinctly modern style as she revealed the dynamics of perception rather than simply writing another "conventional" story, like many other writers of her time. Michael Cunningham, in a tribute to Wolff, took her story and modified her modern style with his own unique writing in "The Hours."
Cunningham played with Woolf's writing styles in his novel, intensifying her clever style. For example, Woolf had an unusual method of making her characters experience backward launches of memories, which were usually sparked by some type of image. In addition, she would jumble time and place to show her readers the reality of human consciousness and experience. Cunningham mimicked her style in "The Hours" yet added to the excitement with his postmodern styles. Therefore, while Woolf's plot was simple, Cunningham's was decidedly complex.
In his introductory statement, Cunningham discusses Woolf, hinting that she killed herself because she believed she had failed as an artist, as she felt she could not create a work that was real and alive. He brings out this suggestion in his novel, through Richard, a gifted poet who is dying of AIDS. Richard, too, was haunted by the belief that he was a failure. In one scene, Richard tells Clarissa, "I thought I was a genius. I actually used that word, privately, to myself" (Cunningham, 1998, p. 65). In addition,...
..I am with you, and know how it is." Cunningham utilizes this idea of Whitman's timelessness to weave him through the narratives that build character in his work. Whitman's issues are clearly still timely as his call to question those things that are seen as progress is universal in the developed and developing worlds, alike. Post-modernism is also often though to as post-colonial as the standardization of borders has seemed
" Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics (2007): 68+. A background of Woolf's early life and her continued social and historical consciousness throughout her life. Eide, Marian. "The Stigma of Nation': Feminist Just War, Privilege, and Responsibility." Hypatia; Spring, 2008, Vol. 23 Issue 2. 48-60. Author draws her thesis from the title of one of Woolf's works, and discusses the feminist position on war, exclusion, and "just war." Froula, Christine. Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury
" And while Clarissa is not repulsed at all by her reflection in the window, Mrs. Woolf is another story, as far as how she sees herself. "She does not look directly into the oval mirror that hangs above the basin...she does not permit herself to look." The mirror, to Mrs. Woolf, "is dangerous; it sometimes shows her the dark manifestation of air that matches her body, takes her form but
These elements of suffering and true friendship contribute to Clarissa's ultimate spiritual survival, despite her society and her own tendency towards flippancy. Clarissa's illness brings with it a number of results. Her personality and outlook become altogether deeper than might be expected. She for example surprises the reader with her awareness of her own flawed nature. Perhaps her illness has brought her into contact with the flaws of the society
And yes -- so she breathed in the earthy garden sweet smell as she stood talking to Miss Pym who owed her help, and thought her kind, for kind she had been years ago; very kind, but she looked older, this year, turning her head from side to side among the irises and roses and nodding tufts of lilac with her eyes half closed, snuffing in, after the street
Interconnected Life is worth living -- suicide, art, and the surprises of the Hours She is going to die. That much is certain -- Virginia Woolf is one of the most famous suicidal authors in all of modern and modernist literature. But even when one knows this terrible fact, one cannot help but ask how, and why as her story unfolds before one's ears and eyes. The structure of The
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