The Hours

by

Michael Cunningham

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Prologue Quotes

She hurries from the house, wearing a coat too heavy for the weather. It is 1941. Another war has begun. She has left a note for Leonard, and another for Vanessa.

Related Characters: Virginia Woolf, Leonard, Vanessa
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 1: Mrs. Dalloway Quotes

There are still the flowers to buy. Clarissa feigns exasperation (though she loves doing errands like this), leaves Sally cleaning the bathroom, and runs out, promising to be back in half an hour.

It is New York City. It is the end of the twentieth century.

Related Characters: Clarissa Vaughan, Virginia Woolf, Sally
Related Symbols: Flowers
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2: Mrs. Woolf Quotes

Writing in that state is the most profound satisfaction she knows, but her access to it comes and goes without warning. She may pick up her pen and follow it with her hand as it moves across the paper; she may pick up her pen and find that she’s merely herself, a woman in a housecoat holding a pen, afraid and uncertain, only mildly competent, with no idea about where to begin or what to write.

Related Characters: Virginia Woolf, Leonard
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3: Mrs. Brown Quotes

She inhales deeply. It is so beautiful; it is so much more than…well, than almost anything, really. In another world, she might have spent her whole life reading. But this is the new world, the rescued world—there’s not much room for idleness. So much has been risked and lost; so many have died.

Related Characters: Laura Brown, Virginia Woolf, Dan
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4: Mrs. Dalloway Quotes

Richard’s chair, particularly, is insane; or, rather, it is the chair of someone who, if not actually insane, has let things slide so far, has gone such a long way toward the exhausted relinquishment of ordinary caretaking—simple hygiene, regular nourishment—that the difference between insanity and hopelessness is difficult to pinpoint. The chair—an elderly, square, overstuffed armchair obesely balanced on slender blond wooden legs—is ostentatiously broken and worthless.[…] Richard will not hear of its being replaced.

Related Characters: Clarissa Vaughan, Richard/Richie, Louis
Page Number: 58
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5: Mrs. Woolf Quotes

She decides, with misgivings, that she is finished for today. Always, there are these doubts. Should she try another hour? Is she being judicious, or slothful? Judicious, she tells herself, and almost believes it. She has her two hundred and fifty words, more or less. Let it be enough. Have faith that you will be here, recognizable to yourself, again tomorrow.

Related Characters: Laura Brown, Virginia Woolf, Leonard
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6: Mrs. Brown Quotes

It seems suddenly easy to bake a cake, to raise a child. She loves her son purely, as mothers do—she does not resent him, does not wish to leave.

Related Characters: Laura Brown, Richard/Richie, Dan
Related Symbols: Cake
Page Number: 79
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7: Mrs. Woolf Quotes

She will give Clarissa Dalloway great skill with servants, a manner that is intricately kind and commanding. Her servants will love her. They will do more than she asks.

Related Characters: Virginia Woolf, Leonard, Nelly
Page Number: 87
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8: Mrs. Dalloway Quotes

How often since then has she wondered what might have happened if she’d tried to remain with him; if she’d returned Richard’s kiss on the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal, gone off somewhere (where?) with him, never bought the packet of incense or the alpaca coat with the rose-shaped buttons. Couldn’t they have discovered something…larger and stranger than what they’ve got?

Related Characters: Clarissa Vaughan, Richard/Richie, Sally
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9: Mrs. Brown Quotes

Laura releases Kitty. She steps back. She has gone too far, they’ve both gone too far, but it is Kitty who’s pulled away first. It is Kitty whose terrors have briefly propelled her, caused her to act strangely and desperately. Laura is the dark-eyed predator. Laura is the odd one, the foreigner, the one who can’t be trusted. Laura and Kitty agree, silently, that this is true.

Laura glances over at Richie. He is still holding the red truck. He is still watching.

Related Characters: Clarissa Vaughan, Laura Brown, Richard/Richie, Kitty
Related Symbols: Cake
Page Number: 110
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10: Mrs. Woolf Quotes

Before following them, Virginia lingers another moment beside the dead bird in its circle of roses. It could be a kind of hat. It could be the missing link between millinery and death.

She would like to lie down in its place. No denying it, she would like that.

Related Characters: Virginia Woolf, Richard/Richie, Vanessa
Related Symbols: Flowers
Page Number: 121
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11: Mrs. Dalloway Quotes

The truth is that he does not love Hunter and Hunter does not love him. They are having an affair; only an affair. He fails to think of him for hours at a time. Hunter has other boyfriends, a whole future planned, and when he’s moved on, Louis has to admit, privately, that he won’t much miss Hunter’s shrill laugh, his chipped front tooth, his petulant silences.

There is so little love in the world.

Related Characters: Clarissa Vaughan, Laura Brown, Virginia Woolf, Richard/Richie, Louis
Page Number: 134
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12: Mrs. Brown Quotes

Leaving the desk, she can hardly believe she’s done it. She has gotten the key, passed through the portals.

Related Characters: Laura Brown, Virginia Woolf, Richard/Richie, Dan
Page Number: 148
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13: Mrs. Woolf Quotes

Nelly turns away and, although it is not at all their custom, Virginia leans forward and kisses Vanessa on the mouth. It is an innocent kiss, innocent enough, but just now, in this kitchen, behind Nelly’s back, it feels like the most delicious and forbidden of pleasures. Vanessa returns the kiss.

Related Characters: Laura Brown, Virginia Woolf, Leonard, Vanessa, Kitty, Nelly
Page Number: 154
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14: Mrs. Dalloway Quotes

Fool, Mary thinks, though she struggles to remain charitable or, at least, serene. No, screw charity. Anything’s better than queers of the old school, dressed to pass, bourgeois to the bone, living like husband and wife. Better to be a frank and open asshole, better to be John fucking Wayne, than a well-dressed dyke with a respectable job.

Fraud, Clarissa thinks. You’ve fooled my daughter, but you don’t fool me. I know a conquistador when I see one. I know all about making a splash. It isn’t hard. If you shout loud enough, for long enough, a crowd will gather to see what all the noise is about. It’s the nature of crowds. They don’t stay long, unless you give them reason. You’re just as bad as most men, just that aggressive, just that self-aggrandizing, and your hour will come and go.

Related Characters: Clarissa Vaughan, Julia, Mary Krull
Page Number: 160
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15: Mrs. Woolf Quotes

She is better, she is safer, if she rests in Richmond; if she does not speak too much, write too much, feel too much; if she does not travel impetuously to London and walk through its streets; and yet she is dying this way, she is gently dying on a bed of roses.

Related Characters: Virginia Woolf, Leonard, Vanessa
Related Symbols: Flowers
Page Number: 154
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16: Mrs. Dalloway Quotes

Sally hands the flowers to her and for a moment they are both simply and entirely happy. They are present, right now, and they have managed, somehow, over the course of eighteen years, to continue loving each other. It is enough. At this moment, it is enough.

Related Characters: Clarissa Vaughan, Sally
Related Symbols: Flowers
Page Number: 185
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17: Mrs. Brown Quotes

He will watch her forever. He will always know when something is wrong. He will always know precisely when and how much she has failed.

Related Characters: Laura Brown, Richard/Richie, Mrs. Latch
Page Number: 193
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18: Mrs. Dalloway Quotes

“But there are still the hours, aren’t there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there’s another. I’m so sick.”

Related Characters: Richard/Richie (speaker), Clarissa Vaughan, Laura Brown, Virginia Woolf
Related Symbols: Cake
Page Number: 197
Explanation and Analysis:

Richard smiles. He shakes his head. He says, “I don’t think two people could have been happier than we’ve been.”

He inches forward, slides gently off the sill, and falls.

Related Characters: Richard/Richie (speaker), Clarissa Vaughan, Virginia Woolf, Leonard
Page Number: 200
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19: Mrs. Brown Quotes

The candles are lit. The song is sung. Dan, blowing the candles out, sprays a few tiny droplets of clear spittle onto the icing’s smooth surface. Laura applauds and, after a moment, Richie does, too.

Related Characters: Laura Brown, Richard/Richie, Dan, Kitty, Ray
Related Symbols: Cake
Page Number: 205
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20: Mrs. Woolf Quotes

Yes, Clarissa will have loved a woman. Clarissa will have kissed a woman, only once. Clarissa will be bereaved, deeply lonely, but she will not die. She will be too much in love with life, with London.

Related Characters: Virginia Woolf, Vanessa
Page Number: 211
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21: Mrs. Brown Quotes

“So,” Dan says after a while. “Are you coming to bed?”

“Yes,” she says.

From far away, she can hear a dog barking.

Related Characters: Laura Brown (speaker), Dan (speaker), Richard/Richie
Related Symbols: Cake
Page Number: 215
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22: Mrs. Dalloway Quotes

They settle into another silence, one that is neither intimate nor particularly uncomfortable. Here she is, then, Clarissa thinks; here is the woman from Richard’s poetry. Here is the lost mother, the thwarted suicide; here is the woman who walked away. It is both shocking and comforting that such a figure could, in fact, prove to be an ordinary-looking old woman seated on a sofa with her hands in her lap.

Related Characters: Clarissa Vaughan, Laura Brown, Richard/Richie, Sally, Julia, Dan
Related Symbols: Cake
Page Number: 220
Explanation and Analysis:

And here she is, herself, Clarissa, not Mrs. Dalloway anymore; there is no one now to call her that. Here she is with another hour before her.

“Come in, Mrs. Brown,” she says. “Everything’s ready.”

Related Characters: Clarissa Vaughan (speaker), Laura Brown, Richard/Richie, Sally, Julia
Page Number: 226
Explanation and Analysis:
No matches.