Essay sample on Women in Stephen Daldry’s The Hours

 The Hours (2002) is a film about woman’s destiny depicted in just a couple of hours. The director uses an interesting way to portray women: he shows life of three different women who are separated by about 80 years and who, despite this fact, have the same sufferings and hesitations. The first woman is Virginia Woolf who starts working on her novel Mrs. Dalloway. However, these several hours of her life shown in the film are full of despair and suicidal thoughts. She is depressed and confused and there is no way out for her. Her husband Leonard tries to help her but does not succeed. These events take place in 1923. The same day of life but of another woman (Laura Brown) and of another year (1953) is shown in the next fragment. Laura is a housewife and she takes care about her son and her husband. She is just reading Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway and starts realizing that her life is very similar. She is not satisfied and wants to end with this life. The third heroine is a modern woman, Clarissa Vaughn. She lives in 2000 and looks after her boyfriend, Richard Brown, who is dying from AIDS. She wants to minimize his sufferings and organize a party because he has won a meaningful literary award, however, she feels that her efforts are useless.

All these three women, despite the fact that they live in different time and have different life situations, feel disillusionment in their lives. They are always caring for other people, however, they do not live for themselves.

They try to be useful and caring but they forget about their own lives. Just during these several hours they all start realizing it, they feel depressed and dispirited and they just want to end these sufferings.



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