February 27, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
The soundtrack to The Hours by Philip Glass
The Hours, a 2002 film based on the novel by Michael Cunningham, weaves together the lives of three complicated women. First, Virginia Woolf is shown writing the manuscript for Mrs. Dalloway. Next, Laura Brown, a housewife in the 1950s, awakes on her husband’s birthday. Third, Clarissa Vaughan goes to buy flowers from a 1990s New York boutique. This last action mirrors Clarissa Dalloway, Woolf’s heroine, who also began the day by buying flowers. Both Clarissas show signs of agency, but Laura’s husband bought his own flowers and Virginia’s husband prevents her from leaving the house.
The film moves through a single day in each of their timelines. Verbal and visual cues constantly remind the audience of time. Years fly quickly by, but hours drip like a leaky faucet. Scenes focus on rich details of the mundane – breaking eggs, kneading dough, cutting flowers, taking medicine. Even distant taxi horns mark time. It is as Richard says, the hours feel crushingly slow.
This film is about identity as much as anything else. Each character faces some restriction in their lives which keeps them from being who they want to be which results in the slow, painful crawl of time. In Virginia Woolf’s case, debilitating depression hinders her happiness, which is why she’s secluded from city life. The quiet suburban environment is supposed to calm her nerves, keep her quiet, minimize stimulation. But she abhors the dullness and tells her husband Leonard:
“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
Laura Brown, too, remains stuck inside her standard 1950s suburban house. She cooks, cleans, and entertains her son with another child on the way. In the absence of culinary skills and interest in being a housewife, she suffocates. In the end, Laura claims that the life of a housewife was killing her. She chose to leave her family rather than abandon her identity.
Finally, Clarissa Vaughan does not even know herself. She fills every moment of life caring for others – whether through the manuscripts she reads, or through promoting and nurturing Richard’s poetry, a man for whom she cares deeply. Upon reflection, Clarissa tells her daughter:
“I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn’t the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then.”
Her words speak about the fleeting nature of life, but also about its beauty and possibility. I imagine all of those flowers gathered in Clarissa Vaughan’s home – all of the colors contained in various vases, spread on tables, and displayed on windowsills – as signs of beauty, but even they mark time. As soon as beauty or happiness blossoms, it is likely to leave. They are reminders that we each have one life and that time passes deceptively by us.
Virginia Woolf, Laura Brown, and Richard choose to leave. Two commit suicide, and one leaves a family behind. Virginia Woolf drowns herself to avoid her fits of madness and so that her husband might lead a more active life. Richard chooses death over the bleak future of constant illness. And Laura leaves her husband and children because she cannot conform to the cultural norms of mother and wife.
Though the film portrays a single day, the sequence of events pulls the audience into each character’s life. Music, images, scenes, dialogue, all work to string time together like musical notation. These intimate and complicated relationships inspire the audience to reflect on the fleeting nature of time.
To begin our discussion of the film, HMU Tutor Gary Schoepfel opened with the following three quotes, which inspired an excellent discussion:
“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars.” – Thoreau, Walden Pond: Where I Lived and What I Lived For
“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.” – Shaw, Man and Superman
“It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully. We seek other conditions because we do not understand the use of our own, and go outside of ourselves because we do not know what it is like inside. Yet there is no use our mounting on stilts, for on stilts we must still walk on our own legs. And on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting only on our own rump.” – Montaigne, “Of Experience”
During our discussion, I got stuck on the way that being intersects with time. Eternity is a duration, but is it a different kind of duration than time? Is eternity part of time, or separate from it? Time flows like a river, but it needs a body to act upon. Every body experiences time differently. And events can greatly affect the way that an individual may feel the effects of time.We live in time because we have to, according to calendars and chronology, but that’s not necessarily what we experience. As you move away (in time) from a situation, you gain perspective. So, distance can be temporal, physical, or emotional. I could go on, but you get the gist. This wonderfully crafted film inspired many connections and themes.
I’m indebted to the participants for such a rich conversation! Our final film discussion in the Winter Film Series takes place on Thursday, March 5th. Email as****@*mu.edu for more information and to register. I hope to see you there!
Photo credit: Shutterstock/ NewFabrika
