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Chapter 9: Mrs. Brown
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Hours, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Passage of Time
Suicide and Mental Health
Marriage, Relationships, and Personal Fulfillment
Reading and Writing
Summary
Analysis
Virginia is reading book proofs with Leonard and Ralph when suddenly, they notice that Vanessa has arrived early with her kids. Leonard doesn’t want to interrupt his work, but Virginia promises to keep her occupied. Virginia goes up to greet Vanessa and jokes that she’s happy to see her but would have been even happier to see her later, at the time she originally promised. Vanessa just laughs and says they finished their business in London early.
Virginia envies Vanessa’s seeming freedom (including the ability to go to London when she wants), and this dynamic resembles Laura and Kitty. Virginia’s distress about Vanessa’s early arrival hints at how Virginia is obsessed with time, and how she wants to control it in the small ways that she can.
Themes
Vanessa’s three children (Julian, Quentin, and Angelica) are out in the yard, looking at a bird they found that seems to be sick. They want to bring it inside, but Vanessa warns that it’s wild and would probably prefer to die outside. They suggest instead having an outdoor funeral for it. Virginia joins them, marveling at their enthusiasm, particularly Angelica’s.
The prologue has already revealed that Virginia herself will die by suicide, and this passage where she observes how enthusiastically Vanessa’s children hold the bird funeral is an early sign of how Virginia herself is thinking about death.
Themes
After the bird funeral, Virginia tells Vanessa that she can’t make tea until Nelly returns from London. Everyone goes inside, but Virginia lingers by the dead bird in a circle of roses. She thinks of how she wouldn’t mind being in the bird’s place. She decides that her character Clarissa won’t be “the bride of death” after all, but rather “the bed in which the bride is laid.”
