The Hours (1998) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

show spoilers

Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

• Clarissa Vaughan: Editor arranging a party for a former lover and dear friend who is dying of AIDS. Clarissa Vaughan is the lesbian lover of Sally and mother of Julia.
• Laura Brown: Pregnant suburban housewife who seeks to escape the reality of her drab, predictable life as a stereotypical aty-at-home wife and mother of her time period.
• Virginia Woolf: Novelist beset with mental illness and yearning for fulfillment.
• Leonard Woolf: Virginia's loving husband, worries about Virginia's problems with depression, panics when he does not know where Virginia is. He tries hard to protect Virginia from her own demons
• Vanessa Bell: Virginia's sister, who appears to Virginia to be a domestic goddess, happy with her children.
• Julian Bell: Son of Vanessa Bell, oldest and favorite.
• Richard: Poet and friend of Clarissa Vaughan. Former lover of Clarissa and Louis but now, 30 years later, great friends with Clarissa. Richard has one a prestigious award, which Clarissa plans to help him celebrate. He is very ill.
• Sally: Clarissa Vaughan's partner of 18 years
• Walter Hardy: An old man trying to be young.
• Richie: Laura Brown's son--young, anxious, sensitive, essentially bound to his mother, Oedipal
• Mary: Add a description of this character.
• Angelica: Vanessa Bell's daughter.
• Oliver St. Ives: Actor, now gay rights activist
• Quentin Bell: Vanessa's son. He's the second oldest sibling.
• Mrs. Latch: Ritchie's babysitter. Evokes jealousy in Ritchie's mother, may even want to evoke jealousy.
• Dan: Laura Brown's husband - mundane, typical
• Kitty: Laura Brown's friend who fears she may have an undiagnosed illness that has kept her from being able to conceive. She provides a catalyst for Laura to ponder her sexuality and her life.
• Ralph: One of Leonard Woolf's assistants.
• Barbara
• Evan
• Hunter
• Louis: As a teenager, Richard's other lover. He and Clarissa "shared" Richard. Now, the three are friends. He returns prior to Richard's planned party to celebrate the award Richard has won.
• Marjorie

Quotes edit see section history

• “You want her to come inside your head and feel the worries and sorrows, the nameless fear”

• “I don't know if I can take this. You know. The party and the ceremony, and then the hour after that, and the hour after that.”

  Richard

• “I am trivial. Endlessly trivial.”

  Mrs. Dalloway

• “She doesn't want, not at all, to be the strange woman, the pathetic creature, full of quirks and rages, solitary, sulking, tolerated but not loved.”

  Laura Brown

• “There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: that was the moment, right then. There has been no other.”

  Clarissa Vaughan (thought)

• “Beauty is a whore, I like money better Still, she loves the world for being rude and indestructible, and she knows other people must love it too, poor as well as rich, through no one speaks specifically of the reasons. Why else do we struggle to go on living, no matter how compromised, no matter how harmed?Still, we want desperately to liveYou measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect; everybody’s little display of genius.”

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.

  Highlighted by 55 Kindle customers

• These days, Clarissa believes, you measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion. You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect; everybody’s little display of genius.

  Highlighted by 46 Kindle customers

• “But there are still the hours, aren’t there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there’s another. I’m so sick.”

  Highlighted by 40 Kindle customers

• There is still that singular perfection, and it’s perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other.

  Highlighted by 39 Kindle customers

• Still, she loves the world for being rude and indestructible, and she knows other people must love it too, poor as well as rich, though no one speaks specifically of the reasons. Why else do we struggle to go on living, no matter how compromised, no matter how harmed?

  Highlighted by 32 Kindle customers

• Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you’ve made for yourself. You end up just sailing from port to port.

  Highlighted by 29 Kindle customers

• She can feel it inside her, an all but indescribable second self, or rather a parallel, purer self. If she were religious, she would call it the soul. It is more than the sum of her intellect and her emotions, more than the sum of her experiences, though it runs like veins of brilliant metal through all three. It is an inner faculty that recognizes the animating mysteries of the world because it is made of the same substance, and when she is very fortunate she is able to write directly through that faculty.

  Highlighted by 29 Kindle customers

• Clarissa, she thinks, is not the bride of death after all. Clarissa is the bed in which the bride is laid.

  Highlighted by 22 Kindle customers

• She thinks of how much more space a being occupies in life than it does in death; how much illusion of size is contained in gestures and movements, in breathing. Dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest.

  Highlighted by 22 Kindle customers

• One always has a better book in one’s mind than one can manage to get onto paper.

  Highlighted by 20 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• London
• Richmond, England
• New York
• Los Angeles

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• The Human Fascination With Mortality: Describe this theme.
• The Constraint of Societal Roles
• Ordinary Life As More Interesting Than Art
• Water
• Domestic Objects
• Flowers
• Laura’s Cake
• Richard’s Chair
• The Dead Bird

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by American Pastoral, and followed by Interpreter of Maladies.

Preceded by Another World, and followed by Veronika Decides to Die.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Michael Cunningham (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Pulitzer Prize (1999: Fiction)
• PEN/Faulkner Award (1999: fiction)
• Stonewall Book Award (1999)
• International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (Finalist, 2000, Shortlist)
• National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist, 1998: Fiction)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3553.U484H68 1998
• Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Some sexual themes, depression

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( C )

Movie Connections edit see section history

• The Hours (IMDb): 2002

More Books Like This edit see section history

Books That Influenced This Book edit see section history

Books That Cite This Book edit see section history