On The Themes In Michael Cunningham's The Hours

The Hours by the American contemporary writer Michael Cunningham interweaves three women's single-day stories in different stages in 20th century with the thread of Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. As a kind of variation and extension of some Woolfian themes, The Hours interrelates three souls which are unknown yet somehow close to one another. Their dilemmatic state of life and their perceptions on death and human's mortality are released and sublimed in the moments of revelation (Woolf's "moments of importance"), which celebrates course over conclusion, confirming the intrinsic meaning and significance of life.This thesis is intended to explore the three major themes—state of existence, death and time in The Hours from a modernist perspective. The introduction part explains the general background of the writer's composition and the strong influence of modernism on Cunningham, especially the influence of Virginia Woolf; it also demonstrates the modernist theoretical support of the three themes, and introduces the main ideas of this thesis. Modernism as an early 20th century movement in many scopes including science, philosophy, literature, and arts exerts great influence on the whole society and individuals as well. The first chapter focuses on the dilemmas of existence the three women have to face against the modernist background. Between madness and reason, freedom and confinement, solitude and sociality, independent and perspective individuals in quest of the self and meaning of life inevitably find themselves in this dilemmatic state. It reveals the human difficulties in this godless modernist world. Despite their different times and societies (early 20th century Britain, post-war and late 20th century America), the three women in this novel (Woolf included as a writer) share similar dilemmas and all suffer from individual struggles and conflicts. The second chapter focuses on the theme of life and death. On both the level of human mortality and suicide due to the fear of spiritual deadness, death triggers individual's reflection and revelation on life and death. Human mortality is not the opposite or even denial of life. Instead, as the reference state against which life takes its meaning and significance, human mortality brings out the rebirth on another level through individual's revelation on life and death. Compared to human mortality, spiritual deadness is much more devastating. With the modernist cultural background, the fear and resistance against it also provokes individual's deep understanding and meditation on life. In this novel, the contrast between poets' suicide and ordinary life conducted by the ordinary women who have had a touch with death in one way or another (through attempt at suicide or witnessing other's death) not only implies the complicated interaction between life and death, but also reveals that through revelations ordinary life somehow sublimes beyond death and mortality. The third chapter explores the central theme of time. The hours flow continuously carrying all the memories and promises, while characters' stream of consciousness breaks the flow of hours to arrive at the essence of life. Thus the traditional linear time view and the search for ultimate meaning or conclusion are dwarfed by the modernist beliefs in psychological time and the freedom and significance of course. The author projects onto the characters the modernist course-and-experience-oriented values, through which they acquire the spiritual freedom beyond the limits of time and space in the revealing moments in life. It provides a contemporary version and more profound expression of "moment of importance" which is one of the most important Woolf's ideas. As the interpretation of the great theme of time, "moment of importance" (or "moment of being") has its significance of penetrating the duality of life and death, material and spirit, ordinary and extraordinary, etc. It casts an impressive light on the faithless and turbid life in the modernist world, and celebrates the intrinsic beauty and significance of ordinary life and consciousness.