The Hours

Vanessa and her children have left, and with them the happiness Virginia felt that afternoon. She’s lost faith in the pages she wrote in the morning and struggles to accept that the circumstances of her life are enough.

Suddenly, Virginia decides to sneak out of the house to go for a walk. In the windy darkness, she feels she’s entered the world of death, a world that in the moment she prefers to the lamps and smell of cooked beef inside. She passes the dead bird in its flower bed and sees it looks like garbage now: The dignity and beauty of its funeral existed only by and for the children.

On the road to town, Virginia passes a laughing couple. She feels alone and vulnerable to the devil: the headaches and voices that sap beauty and hope from life. There is something awesome about the devil, however: “a certain tragic grandeur, for the devil is many things but he is not petty, not sentimental; he seethes with a lethal, intolerable truth” (185). In order to protect herself from the devil, Virginia feels compelled to continue forward—she decides to go to London. In its raucousness, London seems like a refuge.

At the station, Virginia sees the next train isn’t for 25 minutes. This delay conflicts with the image she had of walking onto a departing train. If she takes the next train, she’ll return too late and Leonard will worry. She’s faced with a dilemma: It’s healthier for her to remain in Richmond, and yet, in Richmond, she feels like the bird, “gently dying on a bed of roses” (187).

Virginia buys a ticket and paces up and down the platform. She decides to go for a short walk to kill time. On the road, she sees Leonard’s small, ordinary figure hurrying toward her. Leonard says how much her disappearance worried him; she responds he’s acting strangely. She feels sorry for Leonard and knows she should tell him the truth. Instead, she says she’s just been walking.

As they walk back to Hogarth House at the top of the hill, Virginia projects the duality of Richmond and London onto Mrs. Dalloway: “Mrs. Dalloway [...] is a house on a hill where a party is about to begin; death is the city below, which Mrs. Dalloway loves and fears and which she wants, in some way, to walk into so deeply she will never find her way back again” (190). Virginia squeezes Leonard as if he were the one who escaped danger. 

At Oliver St Ives’s apartment, Sally talks with him and Walter Hardy about making a thriller starring Oliver as the gay protagonist. Walter, who Oliver hopes will write the script, is entranced by Oliver. Sally expresses skepticism about the movie’s commercial viability but is nonetheless also attracted by Oliver’s star power, the way in which he embodies the original brawny American man. Sally thinks fame is the most powerful force in the world (195).

Oliver ribs Walter about writing the profile that got him fired (that Walter warned him against publishing). Walter tries to respond with a smile, but his expression twists into a hateful one; Sally is disgusted by him, imagining that even as a boy he was a status-hungry manipulator. As Oliver talks, Sally can’t tell whether his mannerisms derive from the characters he’s played or vice versa.

Due to Sally’s skepticism, the two men plan the next meeting without her. She feels the men never needed her in the first place and that Oliver just invited her because he thinks of her as some sort of Sapphic mentor (198).

Sally and Walter leave together. Walter asks how Richard is, and when Sally tells him, “Pretty sick,” he expresses dismay; Sally perceives an egoism underlying his lament, which disgusts her: “[A]s he says the correct and respectful things—even as he quite possibly feels the correct and respectful things—he’s thinking, too, of how fine it is to be the semi-famous novelist Walter Hardy” (199). A display of silk shirts catches Walter’s eye; he decides to buy one for his partner Evan. Sally wonders if Walter is disappointed that his trophy boyfriend, who was going to die a tragic death with Walter at his side, is now going to survive because of the new drugs. Walter drags Sally into the store, where she becomes envious of Walter’s knowledge of his partner’s taste; she’s never been able to buy the right gifts for Clarissa. Sally starts to feel resentful.

Suddenly, however, Sally feels extreme longing for Clarissa. She rushes home, buying the only bunch of flowers along the way that look alive. She wants to tell Clarissa of the fear that is the other side of her joy in their quiet relationship: her fear of Clarissa’s death. She feels their relationship has tied her to mortality, to an inevitable loss. At home, Sally senses Clarissa is in a bad mood, and the feeling she had vanishes. Clarissa tells her of Louis’s visit. They laugh that Sally inadvertently also bought yellow roses; in the moment, they are content.

Having read half of Mrs. Dalloway in the hotel, Laura returns late to pick up Richie. As she drives, she feels caught between her world and the worlds of Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway. When she arrives at her neighbor’s, the once familiar area now feels foreign. Laura pushes herself to approach the door.

The neighbor, Mrs. Latch, answers immediately. Richie runs and hugs Laura, crying. Laura sees that he has spent a few unhappy hours in another world that had started to feel like his new life. Laura feels embarrassed; Mrs. Latch is hurt, having thought Richie enjoyed his time. Laura assures Richie that she was only running errands.

In the car with Richie, the setting of late sun and sprinklers over lawns appears to dilate, and Laura feels like herself—pregnant wife and mother—again. She sees an emotion in Richie’s face that, for the first time in her life, she can’t read. She asks him what’s wrong, and he responds in a frantic, overloud voice that he loves her. Her assurance that she loves him too doesn’t change his expression. Laura realizes he knows she lied about where she was. She realizes Richie knows her better than anyone else does: “He is devoted, entirely, to the observation and deciphering of her, because without her there is no world at all” (213). He will always know when something is wrong and always discern the failures she tries to hide.