What are the similarities and differences between Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours?

"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself."

The Hours is a 2002 film based on the novel of the same name by Michael Cunningham. Cunningham's novel in turn was inspired by the life of English writer Virginia Woolf and her 1925 novel, Mrs. Dalloway. The film takes place over the course of three days from three separate years: 1923, 1951, and 2001.

There are several key parallel between the film and Woolf's novel, because the former is structured around the latter. The first parallel is that the character Clarissa (played by Meryl Streep) in the 2001 episode is planning a party. In Mrs. Dalloway, the title character—also named Clarissa—is planning a party, and the bulk of the novel, which takes place on one day, is about her and her preparations.

Another parallel is that Woolf herself (played by Nicole Kidman) is a character in the film, and in the 1923 sequences, she is seen working on the novel that will become Mrs. Dalloway. Finally, the character Laura (played by Julianne Moore) in the 1951 episodes is a housewife reading Mrs. Dalloway. The film draws both from Woolf's life, which ended in suicide, and her novels, although it is more a layered homage to Mrs. Dalloway than an adaptation of it. For that, you may want to look at the 1997 film adaptation.

Woolf's novel is widely considered a masterpiece and one of the most important novels of the 20th century. And while Stephen Daldry's The Hours was acclaimed by some critics, others found it occasionally messy, unfocused, or melodramatic. Ultimately, the key difference between the novel and the film is that the film does not—and indeed could not—capture Woolf's distinctive and experimental prose style, which is often described as having a stream-of-consciousness quality.

What are the key themes in The Hours and how do they resonate with Mrs. Dalloway?

The film The Hours was first released in 2002. The film is directly linked to the novel Mrs. Dalloway, which was written by Virginia Woolf and first published in 1925. Virginia Woolf herself is one of the main three characters portrayed in the film, and the other two main characters, Clarissa Vaughan and Laura Brown, are connected through the novel Mrs. Dalloway. Therefore, it is not surprising to see that the most important themes of the film also resonate with the novel.

Two important themes in the film The Hours are the themes of mental illness and suicide. Virginia Woolf is seen suffering from depression. In the film, this is shown through Virginia’s reduced appetite and lack of interest in her physical appearance, for example. Ultimately, her depression culminates in her suicide. Another character who commits suicide in the film is Richard, Clarissa Vaughan’s friend.

Mental health and suicide are also important themes in the novel Mrs. Dalloway. Here, the character Septimus suffers from mental illness and commits suicide. Interestingly, Septimus kills himself by jumping out of a window, which is the exact same method that Richard uses in the film.

Another important theme in the film is the theme of homosexuality. The most obvious example for this is Clarissa Vaughan, who is in a relationship with a woman, Sally. Richard, Clarissa’s best friend, is also gay. However, there are also strong suggestions in the film that the other two female characters, Virginia Woolf and Laura Brown, have homosexual tendencies.

This theme clearly resonates with the novel, too. For example, we learn that Clarissa Dalloway had previously been in love with a girl called Sally. Similarly, Septimus had a really close friendship with a man called Evans. Sadly, Evans lost his life during the war. Given that Septimus is so affected by Evans’s death, one could pose the question whether perhaps there had been more to this friendship. The novel never explicitly answers this question, but it wouldn’t be surprising if Septimus had indeed been in love with Evans.

How does the film The Hours mirror the ideas and form of Mrs. Dalloway?

The Hours is a 2002 film adaptation (by playwright David Hare) of Michael Cunningham's 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The film and book are both inspired by Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway and by the life of Woolf, which ended with her suicide in the River Ouse. The film takes place in three different time periods and places, one of which is England in the 1920s when Woolf is writing the novel.

Woolf's novel takes place on one day and is largely about the title character planning and throwing a party. The parallel to this in the film is that Meryl Streep's character, Clarissa, who is throwing a party for her poet friend (Ed Harris), who is dying of AIDS. In another sequence, Julianne Moore plays a repressed housewife in the 1950s who reads Mrs. Dalloway. Both of these women can be viewed as more modern counterparts to Clarissa Dalloway, the protagonist of Woolf's novel. At a formal level, all three of the film's narrative threads unfold during a single day, mirroring the novel's one-day plot. Moreover, the film's intimate scenes—many of which are light on dialogue—mirror the novel's focus on its central characters' inner lives.