A Traumatic Study Of The Hours

Michael Cunningham, as a contemporary American writer, has achieved great reputationfor his masterpiece, The Hours, which perfectly shows his writing techniques and innovation.Having been inspired and influenced by Virginia Woolf and her Mrs. Dalloway, Cunninghamwrote The Hours, both of whose content and style are inherited from Woolf’s works.Employing the stream-of-consciousness technique and his own special narrative style,Cunningham describes the traumatic experience of generations in twentieth century, which iscondensed in three women’s one day life. Twentieth century witnessed humans’ greatphysical trauma and psychological trauma due to the two world wars, changes of human’sattitude towards family and the development of the pursuit of freedom. In The Hours, fourmain characters in twentieth century respectively experience the domestic trauma, war trauma,disease trauma and emotional trauma. In order to heal the trauma, they exert themselves tofind ways. Although the main story is about three women, Cunningham focuses not only onthe female trauma but also on the male trauma related to the female trauma. His main idea isthat both men and women can learn from trauma and get improved by overcoming it. Thecause of the trauma may warn people how to reduce the trauma in the right way, while thedifferent choices the character made to overcame trauma may also give reference advice tothe people in the similar traumatic situation.Apart from the Preface and the Conclusion, the main part of this paper consists of fivechapters. Chapter One mainly introduces Michael Cunningham’s life, his major works, andpresent research situation of The Hours at home and abroad. Chapter Two basically interpretsmain terms of trauma theory including the definition of trauma, classification of trauma,traumatic symptoms, the cause of trauma and how to cure trauma. In Chapter Three, whileanalyzing the life of the characters, the main symptoms are revealed including frustration,escape and death. According to the symptoms found in Chapter Three, Chapter Fourdiscovers the cause related to conflicts between individual will and living environment,disease, war, and affection deficiency. Chapter Five interprets different treatment choices ofdifferent characters. Woolf and Richards choose traumatic writing to alleviate trauma, andtheir death means a lot to their treatment; Laura regrets having abandoned her family; onlyClarissa cures her trauma by self-healing and lives on with confidence, which provides peoplewith positive methods to overcome trauma.