Although they are in different ages, Woolf, Laura, and Clarissa all have the same subconscious actions as women: waking up from a deep sleep, confused and in a trance, not knowing what their day will be like; After washing her hair, she stared at herself in the mirror with the look of wanting to know herself again, trying to find the answer. Here are three women who have questions about their own lives: Woolf is suffocating in her country life, afflicted by illness, how she will start writing her new novel called Mrs Dalloway; Laura Carefree and second-time pregnant, with a loving husband and kids, but she doesn't know if life is supposed to go on like this; Clarissa is throwing a party for ex-lover Richard to celebrate his award, but it's so For many years she had lived out her life only in Richard, and her day-to-day life was lackluster.
Ordinary women will use forgetting to avoid when faced with such a problem, but they are three sensitive women who will not be satisfied with the happiness of seeing. Woolf "escaped" after weighing it back and forth, and Laura wanted to kill herself in a hotel room, but a line in the novel "You can't find peace by escaping from life" changed her mind. After giving birth, she got up one day, made breakfast, went to the station, and came to Canada quietly and alone to start her own life. Clarissa finally accepted Richard's death, she learned not to expect more and more happiness, and enjoy the moment, even happiness. In fact, these three women's journey of self-discovery is also a gradual progress: in Woolf's era, women almost had to pay with their lives to face life; Laura did not need to pay that price in the 1950s, but It is also necessary to bear the unforgiveness of family and friends; in the 21st century where Clarissa lives, the pain will always pass, and everything will be clear in the end.
The same phasing is also reflected in the issue of children. Woolf and Lanard have no children, which also alludes to the feminism that is emerging at the moment, has not yet taken shape, and Woolf is not destined to be a good mother in the traditional sense; Laura is about to give birth, but she and her eldest son Richard maintains a certain distance, which may seem cruel, but it also shows that women must separate themselves from men in order to truly know themselves; Clarissa's daughter is approaching adulthood, a metaphor for feminism long past childhood and adolescence , and continue to mature and develop.
In the hours, the family, or the marriage, is gradually disintegrating. For Lannard's love, Woolf was grateful but powerless. She didn't want Lannard to delay his love and dedication in vain, so she felt that death might be the best solution. Laura's family is almost impeccable, but this is not what she wants. Compared to Woolf's breaking the system, she chose to run away and pull herself out of it. At least it doesn't need to be tragic; Clarissa has never been married, and if she wants a child, she can go to the hospital for artificial insemination, and she has lived with a same-sex partner for 10 years without getting tired of each other, and life goes on like this. Marriage and family are no longer the factors that hinder the development of the individual, which is also one of the achievements of feminism in the past century.
As for the same-sex kisses in the film, I don't think it's a display of homosexuality, but a manifestation of women and women seeking solace in each other. Woolf kissing her sister Vanessa is a wishful move, and Vanessa is more amazed than understanding; Laura's kiss with her friend Katie is relatively equal, although Katie is a whole-hearted one. A good wife for her husband and family, but she doesn't mind it at all; and Clarissa is simply a lesbian, and kissing here is truly a voluntary act of both parties, quoting a film critic, "that is, not taking male love as self. source of value".
In addition, there are two images in the film that deserve attention. The first is water. This substance, often thought of as the carrier of femininity, appears at the beginning, almost engulfing it when Woolf throws the river; Laura's pent-up emotion turns into a raging rage as she muses in her hotel room. The rising tide swept through her body; Clarissa knew how to control her emotions. Although she couldn't stop and collapsed in the middle, she was able to recover quickly and not let herself be overwhelmed by the emotional tide. From Woolf to Clarissa, women gradually have to discover and become fully acquainted with the great power hidden within themselves. The second is flowers. The first sentence in "Mrs. Dalloway" reads: "Mrs. Dalloway said she was going to buy flowers herself". Buying flowers by yourself, the seemingly simple act, is indeed a proof of the unfettered personality of oneself. But in the shot, the maid is arranging the blue flowers that she bought, and she says that Ming Woolf can't buy flowers by herself. She can't complete this action. This is her hope for the life of an ideal woman. As for Laura, her husband has already bought the flowers, and she can only be a housewife who accepts good arrangements. In such a life, she will inevitably find a way out on her own. Only Clarissa in New York can really buy flowers by herself, and she happens to be surnamed Dalloway. Fiction and reality have a wonderful overlap here.
And almost all of the male characters in the film do not understand women. Lannard was determined to let his wife live a normal life. Even though he moved his family from London to Richmond for her, he still thought the same as the average person at the time. Following the doctor's orders, he understood that his wife's emotions were huge. The black hole is reluctant to face it; Laura's husband Dan has always treated her with the mentality of a patron, and satisfying her materially is his greatest satisfaction. He also sometimes cared about her other life as a non-housewife, but only there; and Richard's one-time lover, Louis, whose views were almost representative of centuries of typical men's views on women, his views on Richard's The heroine described in the novel is puzzled: "Writing an entire chapter, should she go buy nail polish? And guess what? After 50 pages, she still didn't buy it. Nothing happened. Then she didn't have a reason. committed suicide." They will never understand that it is impossible for a woman to commit suicide for no reason. 50 pages of descriptions about whether to buy nail polish or not, it's obviously pretty obvious that this is a desperate woman, but a man as careless as Louis never notices, never finds out. They will never discover the emotional undercurrent beneath a woman's intact exterior, only to realize it when it erupts, and feel that it happened again "for no reason". It's no wonder that this kind of person can only become Richard's old lover. Richard is the only character in the film who is different from the other men, and his connection in particular makes this character worth exploring. As Laura's son, he experienced first-hand the pain of being abandoned, which made him unable to forgive his mother for the rest of his life. As Clarissa's former lover, he is the sustenance of Clarissa's spirit, he lives for her, and in the end he decides to let go, that is: I know you love me. I love you too, but at some point you let me go. Richard is another tragic figure, his mother's abandonment left a mark on his young mind, traumatizing him throughout his life, and at the same time making him a poet. I think this implies that in the process of feminism development, something under patriarchy is bound to be hurt, but it is also inevitable. Later, he chose to fly out of the window to end his life. The perseverance in it and Woolf's self-imposed courage formed a perfect mutual reflection. The male and female characters switched places here, like a reincarnation, interspersed with the old days. Changes and the imprint of time.
The greatest significance of The Hours is to reveal to us that some things are eternal and can cross the gap of time, that is, our own pursuit of the meaning of life. However, due to the positioning of women's responsibilities in society for a long time, there has been a lack of complete records of women's reflection on this in history. So Woolf was doomed to be lonely in those days, even if her husband did all he could for her, he would never be able to catch up with her mentally. Because Woolf doesn't want to be 'normal', she'd rather go back to the London that made her sick: "I choose not to live in this suffocating, narcotic suburb, but in the violent swinging capital, which is my choice. "Because these people have already seen the essence of life, what they want is not peace and tranquility, but what they want is to maximize the freedom of their minds. Even if the price is death.
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