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Chapter 17: 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
Clarissa goes to help Richard get ready for his party, but when she knocks and no one answers, she gets nervous. She unlocks the door and goes in. When she calls, Richard answers. He’s in a bathrobe sitting on the sill of an open fifth-story window, with one leg in the apartment and one outside. He sounds calm and acts casual, but Clarissa rushes over, terrified.
After several characters have experienced suicidal thoughts in the novel, this is the first event that seems to hint at suicidal action (Richard hallway out the window). In spite of the potentially dire situation, the tone of this passage is understated, reflecting Richard’s disconnected state of mind. Earlier, Laura imagined suicide being as simple as checking in to a hotel, and this passage has a similarly casual tone.
Themes
Richard says that after taking Xanax and Ritalin together, he felt like he needed more air and light, so he opened all the windows and put his leg outside. He worries that he can’t make it to the party. Clarissa begs him to bring his leg in, but Richard doesn’t move. Clarissa tells him he doesn’t have to worry about the party or the ceremony, but Richard says that even if he skips those, he’ll still have to deal with “the hours,” which keep coming one after the other.
While new drugs have managed to save the life of people like Evan, Richard shows the darker side of medical progress and how some drugs can cause people to lose track of reality if taken incorrectly. As Richard reveals in his words about “the hours,” every moment seems to bring him some sort of suffering to endure, showing the toll of mental health struggles.
Themes
Clarissa tells Richard he still has good days to look forward too, but Richard says that isn’t really true anymore. He tells Clarissa to call his mother, since his mother lives alone. Richard then asks Clarissa to tell him a story about the most ordinary thing she can think of. Clarissa starts telling a very short story about buying flowers that morning.
Richard faces the same problem as Clarissa, Virginia, and several other characters in the novel: As he gets older, his life becomes less about anticipating the future, more about regretting the past. When Richard asks to hear an ordinary story to comfort him, Clarissa tells a story that begins the same way as Mrs. Dalloway: with buying flowers. This passage yet again shows the significance of ordinary life, which seems to comfort Richard in his darkest moment.
Themes
Richard recalls being 19 and in love with both Clarissa and Louis. He starts talking about how he failed at life. Clarissa tells him again not to worry about the party. Calling her “Mrs. Dalloway,” Richard says Clarissa has been good to her and that he loves her. He thinks the two of them were as happy as any two people could be. Then he slides out the window.
By calling Clarissa “Mrs. Dalloway,” Richard puts himself in the role of Mrs. Dalloway’s friend Septimus, who kills himself near the end of that novel. Septimus was never the same after fighting in World War I, and Richard’s experience with the HIV/AIDs epidemic has had a similarly traumatic effect on him. Richard’s final words to Clarissa quote part of the real Woolf’s final note to Leonard (which is quoted in the Prologue of The Hours). Richard bookends his relationship with Clarissa, which began with the nickname “Mrs. Dalloway” and now has ended with a different reference to Woolf.
Themes
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Clarissa screams and goes to the window. She sees Richard still falling, with his robe flapping in the wind and imagines maybe somehow it will be OK. But when he hits the ground, he doesn’t get up. She rushes down the stairs to find where Richard fell and knows immediately that he’s dead. She pulls back part of his robe to see his head, then screams at what she sees.
Richard’s body in the air, with his robe flapping, resembles Virginia’s body in the water, with her coat floating around her. Each image seems to suggest how death provides them with a fleeting moment of freedom, but in each case, this triumphant moment quickly turns into something much grimmer (Virginia’s body stuck at the bottom, Richard lying still on the pavement).
Themes
Clarissa stays by the body, resting her head against Richard’s back. She thinks of all the things she would say to him if she could. She wants to tell him she loves him to and to ask forgiveness for not kissing him on the lips, since she was only trying to do it for his own health.
Clarissa initially feared that kissing Richard on the lips would harm his health, but now she fears that she may have played some role in his death by not kissing him on the lips and withholding that intimacy. This moment once again captures how the passage of time inevitably leads to certain regrets.
Themes
