Mirrors and their portrayal in movies and other forms of literature have always fascinated me. Mirrors are used in various ways, but one of my favorite ways is how mirrors are used to show the conflicting feelings or emotions in the characters looking into the mirrors. In one of my favorite movies "Fight Club" by David Fincher, the mirrors throughout the movie serve as symbols reflecting the split personalities of the protagonist, and his alter ego, Tyler Durden. The mirrors seem to be used as a filter for the protagonist's fractured psyche, highlighting the internal struggle between his plain, boring life and Tyler Duren's reckless freedom. I think this reflects (pun intended) the same point you mention about Virginia Wolf's novel "Mrs.Dalloway" as Mrs. Dalloway views herself through the mirror as a socially acceptable identity. Both Mrs. Dalloway and the protagonist of "Fight Club" use these mirrors to show what they view as their perfect self. Both of these characters, as you mention, use these facades to deceive not only the people around them but also themselves, trying to wash away what "imperfections" they may view in themselves.
One of the first elements similar to Mrs. Dalloway is how Clarissa cares about flowers. In the novel, the book opens with Clarissa’s announcement that she’s getting herself flowers. While in the film, the modern-day fetches flowers in her busy schedule, Sally is prompted to switch out the dying flowers in her vase at their apartment. In the novel, the flowers symbolize the youth and beauty that Clarissa reminisces about from her old days, interwoven into her day of preparing for her party that happens the same night. The symbol of flowers is prominent in the novel and the movie as the modern-day Clarissa’s love language to celebrate his old friend Richard’s award. Another similarity is the prescription for mental illness. In the novel, Dr. Bradshaw prescribes Septimus “eat and rest” to treat his mental illness; moreover, when seen by Dr. Holmes, he is then instructed for “solitude.” In the movie, Richard, being tormented by mental illness, leads to a solitary life in the apartment and is occasionally visited by Clarissa, who asks if he has eaten as the first thing she’s concerned about him. Ironically, in the novel, when Septimus commits suicide, Peter thinks of the sound of the siren of the ambulance as a victory of civilization. Yet, in the modern day, the treatment for mental illness doesn’t seem to change. Richard isn’t getting any better with the prescribed “eat and rest” but also decides to take his own life.
“The Hours” is a hauntingly beautiful film that successfully portrays the effects of mental illness on the human psyche that Woolf presents in “Mrs. Dalloway.” The film’s Richard and the book’s Septimus mirror one another as they suffer through suicidal ideation, then ultimately take their lives after experiencing a form of enlightenment. For Septimus, enlightenment is realizing that “trees [are] alive” (22) and that nature is some semblance of “the birth of a new religion” (23). For Richard, it is having a moment of lucidity in his drug-induced stupor, where he remembers Clarissa with clarity, and acknowledges that it is time to “face the hours.” Virginia and Leonard mirror Septimus and Rezia. I believe that Virginia’s dialogue expands upon ideas that Septimus was unable to articulate in his unintelligible state. While Rezia laments her husband’s spiral into “madness” and his threats of suicide, Leonard similarly grieves Virginia’s battle with mental illness, stating that he lives with the fear-the threat-that his wife might take her own life. While Septimus does not articulate much about his relationship, if he had, I’d imagine it would mirror Virginia’s response to Leonard’s outburst when she tells her husband, “You live with the threat. You tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too.” Furthermore, Laura Brown’s discontent in her marriage-the way she is stifled and smothered in her relationship-makes me wonder if Clarissa might have experienced this same lack of fulfillment had she married Peter, whose “demands upon Clarissa…were absurd” as he “asked impossible things” of her (63). (Side note: I absolutely loved your connection between Clarissa/Sally and Diana Barry/Anne Shirley! What a great parallel!) -Lauren H
The interplay between the temporal setting in both Mrs. Dalloway and The hours provide a very distinct contrast in how time is viewed. In both mediums, the concept of time is vigorously reviewed by the characters. In both, the plot takes place over only one day, however it could be argued that the most important moments come in the surveyance of previous events through memory. These moments underline the passage of time the characters feel and how it continues to affect them later. In The Hours as well, the events of the past continue to affect the characters as they experience the day. One important distinction I discovered in these stories was the focus on the future in The Hours. While the characters in Mrs. Dalloway are entirely focused on either the past or present, the characters of The Hours look into the future, however this change may not be for the better, as in The Hours, Woolf uses the future to ruminate on her possible suicide.
The introductory scenes, where Virginia Woolf writes, Laura Brown reads, and Clarissa Vaughan acts, all at once, blew me away. I've seen countless films on writers, and you never get the context for both stories-true and fictional-at once. I also found Septimus's struggle with AIDS to be a good change given the change in time period. I found his performance more compelling than any other version of Septimus so far as believability. The last scene is so tragic. Again, as I had the same issue regarding differences with the movie "Mrs. Dalloway," I found the film "The Hours" to equally not carry the same weight as the novel, in regard to Mrs. Dalloway's internal monologues, so often full of pessimism and regret. The setting felt much darker here, and you do get darkness in relation to Virginia Woolf, as a contextual background for the book, but it's still very different in this regard.
The film, "After Hours,: renders other elements of "Mrs. Dalloway" specifically capturing the responsibility of throwing a party that both Clarissa’s are assigned. In the film, Clarissa states “Sally, I think I’ll buy the flowers myself,” showing that Clarissa is the same independent and capable woman that is seen in Mrs. Dalloway. This iconic first line of the novel is spun to include the word “Sally,” in the film which I believe helps overemphasize the romantic relationship between Clarissa and Sally. In the text, Peter is the one who interrupts Clarissa as she preps for the party; however in the film, Sally is the one who appears. Regardless, the same Clarissa is ambitious to ensure that the party she plans for Richard will be done grand and correctly under her doing. -Clare Z
One scene from the movie that really stood out to me was the conversation Clarissa had with her daughter. In the movie Clarissa tells her daughter how she's only really happy when she is around Richard and that everything else just isn’t as great. Her daughter becomes clearly upset about this, and Clarissa quickly corrects herself. While in Mrs.Dalloway, Clarissa, when talking to Peter, says something like here is my daughter, and it comes off sounding like she is trying to make their relationship seem better and closer than it actually is. Both scenes from the movie and book show how Clarissa puts on a show or facade for people in order to make them believe she is better than she says she is. - Payton S.
As in Virginia Woolf's original novel "Mrs. Dalloway," Michael Cunningham's novel "The Hours" pays special attention to the idea of the passage of time. In Woolf's novel, reflection on the past is a theme that connects nearly all of her characters, from Clarissa and Peter's nostalgia for the past to Septimus' trauma from the war. And, just like in "Mrs. Dalloway," the events of "The Hours" take place over the course of a day, testing the relative temporality of "a moment." Each of the characters in "The Hours" struggle with the passage of time and all long for more: more time to prepare for the party, more time to write, and more time with a dying friend. But "The Hours" also reflects on how some characteristics of women, like that of independence and self-reflection, never change despite the passage of time and decades that separate Woolf from the modern-day Clarissa.
Stephen Daldry’s The Hours is able to capture the emotional core of Woolf’s original 1925 novel by allowing the characters to externalize their inner feelings of entrapment. This is not to say that the performances from the leads are not subtle, as Julianne Moore’s delivery is always brilliantly restrained. However, their distress is always visible, bubbling above the surface, which is an appropriate artistic decision on the part of the director. Film is primarily a visual medium, making a true transference of Mrs. Dalloway’s version of Clarissa, with her unseen internal monologues, an impossibility. Atkins’s adaptation exists in an unsure middleground, in some ways staying close to the source material, while also simplifying the complexity of Clarissa’s original feelings. The version of Clarissa that Atkins creates fails to communicate the pervasive dissatisfaction that defines the novel’s protagonist, making her extended suicidal contemplation after the death of Septimus seem, absent from the novel, an inconsistency among the other aspects of her character in the film. Streep’s portrayal of Clarissa, especially in a scene with her daughter, Julia, is able to translate into film what Woolf’s Clarissa never admits to herself or to her own daughter, Elizabeth. The way time becomes a reflective surface in The Hours also yields a refreshing view of mirrors’ in Woolf’s work. Through the three parallel timelines, the film demonstrates how the separate protagonists each feel a discontent when confronted with life’s limitations. Woolf experiences isolation and confinement in the 1920s, a time that either stigmatizes or uses destructive treatments for mental health. Laura Brown is also a victim of the cultural uniformity and domineering social mores of the 1950s, which excludes the possibility of less conventional forms of living. However, 2001’s Clarissa also experiences these feelings, despite a level of personal freedom that the other two protagonists lack. The universality of this dissatisfaction illustrates how individuals tend to desire an exemplary form of existence when reflecting on the pressures of life, similar to Woolf’s women who avoid their gaze in the mirror, which serves to remind them of their perceived physical deficiencies.
Mirrors and reflections can be extremely powerful in films and literature. In the video, you discuss Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway who uses a mirror to deceive or to pretend to be ok. Although not a perfect comparison, this idea of using a mirror to “pretend to be ok” reminded me of Selina and Gordon from A Patch of Blue. In their case, the use of a mirror or reflection was done in a figurative way rather than a literal one but I argue that the reflection was used for the same outcome. In A Patch of Blue, I believe Guy Green characterizes Selina to be a reflection of Gordon, not in a literal sense, one character is a teenage girl and the other is a middle-aged African American man, but rather in a figurative sense. Selina and Gordon are treated very similarly for completely different reasons. Both are discriminated against for aspects of their life they can't control. Because of that, Gordon sees himself in Selina, in other words, he sees a reflection of himself with her. Because Gordon sees himself in Selina he works very hard to make her situation better in an attempt to alleviate the struggles he faces as a black man living in America in the middle of the twentieth century. If he helps Selina get into a better situation maybe he can “pretend to be ok.” In this way, Gordon uses a mirror or reflection of himself to escape the struggles he faces and prove to others and himself that he is ok.
From the biographical information given in this video about Woolf, one can concur that Woolf chose to use mirrors as a symbol of self confusion, rather than sight and perception. As stated in the video “Woolf felt shame looking into mirrors when she was six” therefore the difficulty in being able to see the self accurately that we see in characters such as Isabella and Rhoda can be argued as stemming from Woolf’s own. What is most interesting about “The Lady in the Looking Glass: A Reflection” is that the narrator is not seeing her own reflection but rather her friend’s. It is in seeing “the slow-moving figure” the narrator can see the “hard truth of the actual self”. This is similar to how both in Mrs. Dalloway and “The Hours”, Clarrissa and Laura struggle with the acknowledgement of their sexual identity, it is hard for them to truly see their reflections, as they are forced to shove away their true identities. This discrepancy with themselves goes deeper beyond how they look; it is a deeper crisis with the aspects of their personal identities that arenot accepted by society. We see this discrepancy about the woman Isabella Tyson, who appears in “the drawing room looking glass” whom readers and the narrator have trouble "prising..open" as if she were an oyster,”. It is interesting to note how difficult it is for Tyson to access herself, and note it as a parallel to the secrets that readers/ viewers know that Clarrissa and Laura hide from the rest of the world. The difference is, that Dr. Marchbanks notes is that we know what Clarissa and Laura keep secret, but readers never gain insight to the letters that Isabella keeps hidden away, and why she makes it seem that she has individuals in her life, when she is in fact very lonely and solitary.
While this video focuses on how women perceive themselves in the mirror, I found many parallels between the women and Alex from “A Clockwork Orange.” When Marchbanks pointed out that mirrors inspire cold and unflattering self-examination in women, I thought of Alex’s moment of self reflection in the coffee shop with Pete. In “A Room Of One’s Own” Virginia Woolf presents the notion that women are men’s mirrors, reflecting back to them an inflated self image contrary to who they actually are. Pete, when he was one of Alex ‘s droogs, allowed Alex to view himself as someone powerful and dangerous. Seeing himself in the reflection of Pete once excited his self importance because in Pete‘s faults, Alex saw his superior distinction. The sheer power he had as a leader of people he perceived as lesser than himself gave Alex a sense of worth. At the end of “A Clockwork Orange,” the power he once had in the reflection of Pete changes to insignificance when Pete no longer acts and looks like Alex. When otherness was once grounds for violence by the likes of Alex and Pete, Pete’s new polarity has made him successful and happy. Abandoning the droog lifestyle has granted Pete a wife and , seemingly stable life. Now, Alex is seeing his unsubstantial livelihood reflected in the now absent likeness of his friend Pete. Instead of Pete, reflecting back to Alex a certain and prestige, Pete’s newfound stability in leaving the ultraviolent lifestyle sour Alex to consider his path and rethink the delinquent life he has found himself in. This process of consideration and stark realization is not unlike the description of “The Lady In the Looking Glass” from Marchbanks’ video, upon seeing the reformed Pete, Alex was filled with “the tenderness of regret at the recollection of unrealized possibilities.”
In Dr. Marchbanks’ video he examines Woolf’s use of mirrors as symbols across her works and adaptations of her work. He finds that Woolf’s mirrors function as unflattering reflections that often point to the things that are less than desirable in women’s appearances. Paired with Woolf’s idea from _A Room of One’s Own_ that women serve as mirrors that reflect men as bigger and better than they are, this analysis connects multiple interpretations of the mirror as a symbol in Woolf’s literature. Dr. Marchbanks characterizes how Woolf’s mirrors reinforce beauty stereotypes for women, but the men in her stories do not have similarly negative experiences when viewing themselves in mirrors. This connects to Woolf’s idea of women as mirrors for men, because if they do not see their flaws in mirrors, and they are not presented with them in their interactions with other people (women specifically), then they will not experience the negative impacts on their personal image. Women often fixate on their flaws in their reflections because western society, as Dr. Marchbanks correctly states, has placed higher standards on the appearances of women than on those of men.
In C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (1956), Orual’s first encounter with a mirror on her journey to spiritual renewal exemplifies Woolf’s intention of using reflection to “inspire cold and unflattering self-examination.” She appears with the face of Ungit during a vision with her father who forces her to dig into Earth’s layers, signifying an unearthing of truths within her psychological state that exposes her to be “as ugly in the soul as she (Ungit); greedy, blood-gorged” (Lewis 319). This supports Woolf’s proposal that reflections force characters into “confrontation with aspects of reality they might otherwise ignore or cover over with their imagination.” Orual physically covers up her face with a veil to ensure her ugliness (a symbol of her spiritual ugliness) is not observed by her citizens as well as herself, and avoids the humbling power of looking glasses as an act of self-denial and chosen ignorance.
One of the most puzzling aspects of Daldry's "The Hours" to me was the role of its men. I found the underlying dynamics of the three generations of women to have a lot in common, yet the station of the men of each generation vary. None of them seem to be terrible people. Leonard, Richard, and Dan Brown all appear honest, loving men. Leonard raises his voice at Virginia, but that's about as violent towards the women as the men ever really get. Richard is the only one of the men to harm his life, mirroring Nicole Kidman's Woolf character's own act. Laura Brown, of the in between generation in the 50's, represents a sort of equilibrium in that she nearly takes her own, but resists. Before her Virginia does it, afterwards Richard does. It's as if she marked a turning point, which perhaps does not rely on gender as much as some other criteria. Sometimes Leonard seems a little too stern and controlling; Dan seems very daft at times; Richard often appears to be a burden on Streep's Clarissa, yet there can be some duality because he also says that he is living for her. Though in drastically different ways, it seems all the men are successful in some field. I'm not sure if that could be said for Laura Brown, however. In a way, with the deaths of Richard and Virginia, it seemed as if the film was suggesting a commonality between reality and Virginia's fiction, with the novel's Septimus Smith's demise.
One of the most poignant similarities I noticed between Mrs. Dalloway and the movie adaptation of The Hours was the portrayal of a common illness of the time. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf writes about Septimus, who suffers from shellshock and PTSD from fighting in WWI. In The Hours, Richard Dalloway suffers from AIDS. I found it so creative for the movie to represent aspects of Septimus’s character through Richard and with the illness of AIDS rather than WWI shell shock. Of course, since the movie and book take place in different centuries, it wouldn't have made much sense for Richard to be suffering from WWI shell shock. I think that the director’s choice to replace shell shock with AIDS allows the audience to more authentically understand the stress Mrs. Dalloway experiences. Another related similarity between the movie and the book is the subtle commentary on the difficulty/burden placed on the families of those suffering from chronic or long term illnesses. In Mrs. Dalloway, Lucrezia momentarily breaks down because she feels like she doesn’t recognize the person she married, and in The Hours, Mrs. Dalloway feels pain and frustration with her husband because of the way his illness has affected his outlook on life.
Mirrors and their portrayal in movies and other forms of literature have always fascinated me. Mirrors are used in various ways, but one of my favorite ways is how mirrors are used to show the conflicting feelings or emotions in the characters looking into the mirrors. In one of my favorite movies "Fight Club" by David Fincher, the mirrors throughout the movie serve as symbols reflecting the split personalities of the protagonist, and his alter ego, Tyler Durden. The mirrors seem to be used as a filter for the protagonist's fractured psyche, highlighting the internal struggle between his plain, boring life and Tyler Duren's reckless freedom. I think this reflects (pun intended) the same point you mention about Virginia Wolf's novel "Mrs.Dalloway" as Mrs. Dalloway views herself through the mirror as a socially acceptable identity. Both Mrs. Dalloway and the protagonist of "Fight Club" use these mirrors to show what they view as their perfect self. Both of these characters, as you mention, use these facades to deceive not only the people around them but also themselves, trying to wash away what "imperfections" they may view in themselves.
One of the first elements similar to Mrs. Dalloway is how Clarissa cares about flowers. In the novel, the book opens with Clarissa’s announcement that she’s getting herself flowers. While in the film, the modern-day fetches flowers in her busy schedule, Sally is prompted to switch out the dying flowers in her vase at their apartment. In the novel, the flowers symbolize the youth and beauty that Clarissa reminisces about from her old days, interwoven into her day of preparing for her party that happens the same night. The symbol of flowers is prominent in the novel and the movie as the modern-day Clarissa’s love language to celebrate his old friend Richard’s award. Another similarity is the prescription for mental illness. In the novel, Dr. Bradshaw prescribes Septimus “eat and rest” to treat his mental illness; moreover, when seen by Dr. Holmes, he is then instructed for “solitude.” In the movie, Richard, being tormented by mental illness, leads to a solitary life in the apartment and is occasionally visited by Clarissa, who asks if he has eaten as the first thing she’s concerned about him. Ironically, in the novel, when Septimus commits suicide, Peter thinks of the sound of the siren of the ambulance as a victory of civilization. Yet, in the modern day, the treatment for mental illness doesn’t seem to change. Richard isn’t getting any better with the prescribed “eat and rest” but also decides to take his own life.
“The Hours” is a hauntingly beautiful film that successfully portrays the effects of mental illness on the human psyche that Woolf presents in “Mrs. Dalloway.” The film’s Richard and the book’s Septimus mirror one another as they suffer through suicidal ideation, then ultimately take their lives after experiencing a form of enlightenment. For Septimus, enlightenment is realizing that “trees [are] alive” (22) and that nature is some semblance of “the birth of a new religion” (23). For Richard, it is having a moment of lucidity in his drug-induced stupor, where he remembers Clarissa with clarity, and acknowledges that it is time to “face the hours.”
Virginia and Leonard mirror Septimus and Rezia. I believe that Virginia’s dialogue expands upon ideas that Septimus was unable to articulate in his unintelligible state. While Rezia laments her husband’s spiral into “madness” and his threats of suicide, Leonard similarly grieves Virginia’s battle with mental illness, stating that he lives with the fear-the threat-that his wife might take her own life. While Septimus does not articulate much about his relationship, if he had, I’d imagine it would mirror Virginia’s response to Leonard’s outburst when she tells her husband, “You live with the threat. You tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too.”
Furthermore, Laura Brown’s discontent in her marriage-the way she is stifled and smothered in her relationship-makes me wonder if Clarissa might have experienced this same lack of fulfillment had she married Peter, whose “demands upon Clarissa…were absurd” as he “asked impossible things” of her (63).
(Side note: I absolutely loved your connection between Clarissa/Sally and Diana Barry/Anne Shirley! What a great parallel!)
-Lauren H
The interplay between the temporal setting in both Mrs. Dalloway and The hours provide a very distinct contrast in how time is viewed. In both mediums, the concept of time is vigorously reviewed by the characters. In both, the plot takes place over only one day, however it could be argued that the most important moments come in the surveyance of previous events through memory. These moments underline the passage of time the characters feel and how it continues to affect them later. In The Hours as well, the events of the past continue to affect the characters as they experience the day. One important distinction I discovered in these stories was the focus on the future in The Hours. While the characters in Mrs. Dalloway are entirely focused on either the past or present, the characters of The Hours look into the future, however this change may not be for the better, as in The Hours, Woolf uses the future to ruminate on her possible suicide.
The introductory scenes, where Virginia Woolf writes, Laura Brown reads, and Clarissa Vaughan acts, all at once, blew me away. I've seen countless films on writers, and you never get the context for both stories-true and fictional-at once. I also found Septimus's struggle with AIDS to be a good change given the change in time period. I found his performance more compelling than any other version of Septimus so far as believability. The last scene is so tragic. Again, as I had the same issue regarding differences with the movie "Mrs. Dalloway," I found the film "The Hours" to equally not carry the same weight as the novel, in regard to Mrs. Dalloway's internal monologues, so often full of pessimism and regret. The setting felt much darker here, and you do get darkness in relation to Virginia Woolf, as a contextual background for the book, but it's still very different in this regard.
The film, "After Hours,: renders other elements of "Mrs. Dalloway" specifically capturing the responsibility of throwing a party that both Clarissa’s are assigned. In the film, Clarissa states “Sally, I think I’ll buy the flowers myself,” showing that Clarissa is the same independent and capable woman that is seen in Mrs. Dalloway. This iconic first line of the novel is spun to include the word “Sally,” in the film which I believe helps overemphasize the romantic relationship between Clarissa and Sally. In the text, Peter is the one who interrupts Clarissa as she preps for the party; however in the film, Sally is the one who appears. Regardless, the same Clarissa is ambitious to ensure that the party she plans for Richard will be done grand and correctly under her doing. -Clare Z
One scene from the movie that really stood out to me was the conversation Clarissa had with her daughter. In the movie Clarissa tells her daughter how she's only really happy when she is around Richard and that everything else just isn’t as great. Her daughter becomes clearly upset about this, and Clarissa quickly corrects herself. While in Mrs.Dalloway, Clarissa, when talking to Peter, says something like here is my daughter, and it comes off sounding like she is trying to make their relationship seem better and closer than it actually is. Both scenes from the movie and book show how Clarissa puts on a show or facade for people in order to make them believe she is better than she says she is. - Payton S.
As in Virginia Woolf's original novel "Mrs. Dalloway," Michael Cunningham's novel "The Hours" pays special attention to the idea of the passage of time. In Woolf's novel, reflection on the past is a theme that connects nearly all of her characters, from Clarissa and Peter's nostalgia for the past to Septimus' trauma from the war. And, just like in "Mrs. Dalloway," the events of "The Hours" take place over the course of a day, testing the relative temporality of "a moment." Each of the characters in "The Hours" struggle with the passage of time and all long for more: more time to prepare for the party, more time to write, and more time with a dying friend. But "The Hours" also reflects on how some characteristics of women, like that of independence and self-reflection, never change despite the passage of time and decades that separate Woolf from the modern-day Clarissa.
Stephen Daldry’s The Hours is able to capture the emotional core of Woolf’s original 1925 novel by allowing the characters to externalize their inner feelings of entrapment. This is not to say that the performances from the leads are not subtle, as Julianne Moore’s delivery is always brilliantly restrained. However, their distress is always visible, bubbling above the surface, which is an appropriate artistic decision on the part of the director. Film is primarily a visual medium, making a true transference of Mrs. Dalloway’s version of Clarissa, with her unseen internal monologues, an impossibility. Atkins’s adaptation exists in an unsure middleground, in some ways staying close to the source material, while also simplifying the complexity of Clarissa’s original feelings. The version of Clarissa that Atkins creates fails to communicate the pervasive dissatisfaction that defines the novel’s protagonist, making her extended suicidal contemplation after the death of Septimus seem, absent from the novel, an inconsistency among the other aspects of her character in the film. Streep’s portrayal of Clarissa, especially in a scene with her daughter, Julia, is able to translate into film what Woolf’s Clarissa never admits to herself or to her own daughter, Elizabeth.
The way time becomes a reflective surface in The Hours also yields a refreshing view of mirrors’ in Woolf’s work. Through the three parallel timelines, the film demonstrates how the separate protagonists each feel a discontent when confronted with life’s limitations. Woolf experiences isolation and confinement in the 1920s, a time that either stigmatizes or uses destructive treatments for mental health. Laura Brown is also a victim of the cultural uniformity and domineering social mores of the 1950s, which excludes the possibility of less conventional forms of living. However, 2001’s Clarissa also experiences these feelings, despite a level of personal freedom that the other two protagonists lack. The universality of this dissatisfaction illustrates how individuals tend to desire an exemplary form of existence when reflecting on the pressures of life, similar to Woolf’s women who avoid their gaze in the mirror, which serves to remind them of their perceived physical deficiencies.
Mirrors and reflections can be extremely powerful in films and literature. In the video, you discuss Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway who uses a mirror to deceive or to pretend to be ok. Although not a perfect comparison, this idea of using a mirror to “pretend to be ok” reminded me of Selina and Gordon from A Patch of Blue. In their case, the use of a mirror or reflection was done in a figurative way rather than a literal one but I argue that the reflection was used for the same outcome. In A Patch of Blue, I believe Guy Green characterizes Selina to be a reflection of Gordon, not in a literal sense, one character is a teenage girl and the other is a middle-aged African American man, but rather in a figurative sense. Selina and Gordon are treated very similarly for completely different reasons. Both are discriminated against for aspects of their life they can't control. Because of that, Gordon sees himself in Selina, in other words, he sees a reflection of himself with her. Because Gordon sees himself in Selina he works very hard to make her situation better in an attempt to alleviate the struggles he faces as a black man living in America in the middle of the twentieth century. If he helps Selina get into a better situation maybe he can “pretend to be ok.” In this way, Gordon uses a mirror or reflection of himself to escape the struggles he faces and prove to others and himself that he is ok.
From the biographical information given in this video about Woolf, one can concur that Woolf chose to use mirrors as a symbol of self confusion, rather than sight and perception. As stated in the video “Woolf felt shame looking into mirrors when she was six” therefore the difficulty in being able to see the self accurately that we see in characters such as Isabella and Rhoda can be argued as stemming from Woolf’s own. What is most interesting about “The Lady in the Looking Glass: A Reflection” is that the narrator is not seeing her own reflection but rather her friend’s. It is in seeing “the slow-moving figure” the narrator can see the “hard truth of the actual self”. This is similar to how both in Mrs. Dalloway and “The Hours”, Clarrissa and Laura struggle with the acknowledgement of their sexual identity, it is hard for them to truly see their reflections, as they are forced to shove away their true identities. This discrepancy with themselves goes deeper beyond how they look; it is a deeper crisis with the aspects of their personal identities that arenot accepted by society. We see this discrepancy about the woman Isabella Tyson, who appears in “the drawing room looking glass” whom readers and the narrator have trouble "prising..open" as if she were an oyster,”. It is interesting to note how difficult it is for Tyson to access herself, and note it as a parallel to the secrets that readers/ viewers know that Clarrissa and Laura hide from the rest of the world. The difference is, that Dr. Marchbanks notes is that we know what Clarissa and Laura keep secret, but readers never gain insight to the letters that Isabella keeps hidden away, and why she makes it seem that she has individuals in her life, when she is in fact very lonely and solitary.
While this video focuses on how women perceive themselves in the mirror, I found many parallels between the women and Alex from “A Clockwork Orange.” When Marchbanks pointed out that mirrors inspire cold and unflattering self-examination in women, I thought of Alex’s moment of self reflection in the coffee shop with Pete. In “A Room Of One’s Own” Virginia Woolf presents the notion that women are men’s mirrors, reflecting back to them an inflated self image contrary to who they actually are. Pete, when he was one of Alex ‘s droogs, allowed Alex to view himself as someone powerful and dangerous. Seeing himself in the reflection of Pete once excited his self importance because in Pete‘s faults, Alex saw his superior distinction. The sheer power he had as a leader of people he perceived as lesser than himself gave Alex a sense of worth. At the end of “A Clockwork Orange,” the power he once had in the reflection of Pete changes to insignificance when Pete no longer acts and looks like Alex. When otherness was once grounds for violence by the likes of Alex and Pete, Pete’s new polarity has made him successful and happy. Abandoning the droog lifestyle has granted Pete a wife and , seemingly stable life. Now, Alex is seeing his unsubstantial livelihood reflected in the now absent likeness of his friend Pete. Instead of Pete, reflecting back to Alex a certain and prestige, Pete’s newfound stability in leaving the ultraviolent lifestyle sour Alex to consider his path and rethink the delinquent life he has found himself in. This process of consideration and stark realization is not unlike the description of “The Lady In the Looking Glass” from Marchbanks’ video, upon seeing the reformed Pete, Alex was filled with “the tenderness of regret at the recollection of unrealized possibilities.”
In Dr. Marchbanks’ video he examines Woolf’s use of mirrors as symbols across her works and adaptations of her work. He finds that Woolf’s mirrors function as unflattering reflections that often point to the things that are less than desirable in women’s appearances. Paired with Woolf’s idea from _A Room of One’s Own_ that women serve as mirrors that reflect men as bigger and better than they are, this analysis connects multiple interpretations of the mirror as a symbol in Woolf’s literature. Dr. Marchbanks characterizes how Woolf’s mirrors reinforce beauty stereotypes for women, but the men in her stories do not have similarly negative experiences when viewing themselves in mirrors. This connects to Woolf’s idea of women as mirrors for men, because if they do not see their flaws in mirrors, and they are not presented with them in their interactions with other people (women specifically), then they will not experience the negative impacts on their personal image. Women often fixate on their flaws in their reflections because western society, as Dr. Marchbanks correctly states, has placed higher standards on the appearances of women than on those of men.
In C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (1956), Orual’s first encounter with a mirror on her journey to spiritual renewal exemplifies Woolf’s intention of using reflection to “inspire cold and unflattering self-examination.” She appears with the face of Ungit during a vision with her father who forces her to dig into Earth’s layers, signifying an unearthing of truths within her psychological state that exposes her to be “as ugly in the soul as she (Ungit); greedy, blood-gorged” (Lewis 319). This supports Woolf’s proposal that reflections force characters into “confrontation with aspects of reality they might otherwise ignore or cover over with their imagination.” Orual physically covers up her face with a veil to ensure her ugliness (a symbol of her spiritual ugliness) is not observed by her citizens as well as herself, and avoids the humbling power of looking glasses as an act of self-denial and chosen ignorance.
One of the most puzzling aspects of Daldry's "The Hours" to me was the role of its men. I found the underlying dynamics of the three generations of women to have a lot in common, yet the station of the men of each generation vary. None of them seem to be terrible people. Leonard, Richard, and Dan Brown all appear honest, loving men. Leonard raises his voice at Virginia, but that's about as violent towards the women as the men ever really get. Richard is the only one of the men to harm his life, mirroring Nicole Kidman's Woolf character's own act. Laura Brown, of the in between generation in the 50's, represents a sort of equilibrium in that she nearly takes her own, but resists. Before her Virginia does it, afterwards Richard does. It's as if she marked a turning point, which perhaps does not rely on gender as much as some other criteria. Sometimes Leonard seems a little too stern and controlling; Dan seems very daft at times; Richard often appears to be a burden on Streep's Clarissa, yet there can be some duality because he also says that he is living for her. Though in drastically different ways, it seems all the men are successful in some field. I'm not sure if that could be said for Laura Brown, however. In a way, with the deaths of Richard and Virginia, it seemed as if the film was suggesting a commonality between reality and Virginia's fiction, with the novel's Septimus Smith's demise.
One of the most poignant similarities I noticed between Mrs. Dalloway and the movie adaptation of The Hours was the portrayal of a common illness of the time. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf writes about Septimus, who suffers from shellshock and PTSD from fighting in WWI. In The Hours, Richard Dalloway suffers from AIDS. I found it so creative for the movie to represent aspects of Septimus’s character through Richard and with the illness of AIDS rather than WWI shell shock. Of course, since the movie and book take place in different centuries, it wouldn't have made much sense for Richard to be suffering from WWI shell shock. I think that the director’s choice to replace shell shock with AIDS allows the audience to more authentically understand the stress Mrs. Dalloway experiences. Another related similarity between the movie and the book is the subtle commentary on the difficulty/burden placed on the families of those suffering from chronic or long term illnesses. In Mrs. Dalloway, Lucrezia momentarily breaks down because she feels like she doesn’t recognize the person she married, and in The Hours, Mrs. Dalloway feels pain and frustration with her husband because of the way his illness has affected his outlook on life.
Hmm. There is no Mrs. Dalloway in The Hours--to whom did you intend to refer?