A woman's life, condensed into one day, only one day. On this day, she spent her life, and in this day, her fate became clear. - Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > written on the front</h1>
The Hours is a 2002 film directed by Stephen Dadley and co-starring Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore.
The film is mainly about the story of three women in one day in different time and space, and each of them has a certain wonderful connection with the female writer Woolf's novel "Mrs. Dalloway".
Mrs. Dalloway
Published in 1925, Mrs. Dalloway is one of the masterpieces of the British writer Virginia Woolf. The author uses a stream-of-consciousness approach to narrate the story of the protagonist Clarissa Dalloway (i.e. Mrs. Dalloway) who took place one day in Post-World War I Britain.
Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway is a middle-aged noblewoman of British high society, living a peaceful and rich life, but in her heart she longs for freedom, longs to get rid of the shackles of tradition, in the day after day of life, she gradually perceives the loss of self, and then often in panic, anxiety, pain, wandering, depression and other psychological struggles, eager to break free of the cage of life, explore herself, and live out the meaning of life.
The narrative structure of this film is three eras, three scenes are parallel and cross-promoted, and the story scenes are set as:
Time: 1923, After World War I, Location: Richmond, England, Protagonist: Writer Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman), Other Characters: Her Husband Leonard;
Time: 1951, After World War II, Los Angeles, Protagonist: Pregnant housewife Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), other characters: son Richard and husband Dan;
When: 2001, New York, Protagonist: A publisher editor, Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep), other characters: her girlfriend Sully and daughter Julian.
As Woolf wrote in Madame Dalloway: "A woman's life is condensed into one day, only one day, and in this day she spends her whole life, and in this day her destiny becomes clear." ”
The film also adopts the narrative method of the "Mrs. Dalloway" novel, condensing the stories of three women in different time and space into one day, because in Woolf's view, a day is a lifetime.
Virginia Woolf in 1923 was sketching out the novel for Mrs. Dalloway, and she had a troubled life, experienced multiple mental breakdowns as an adult, and two suicides, with a mixed mental state, her loving husband Leonard sought medical treatment for her, moved her family to the richmond countryside dozens of kilometers from London, and opened a printing house to make Virginia better alive and write, and then this was not what she really wanted, and such a life made her suffocate and miserable.
Virginia Woolf
Laura Brown in 1951, with a lovely son Richard and a loving husband Dan, the family seems happy and impeccable. At this time, Laura was reading Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway", and was deeply impacted and shocked by Mrs. Dalloway's story, and the real and comfortable life made her feel tormented and struggling.
Laura Brown
Clarissa Vaughn in 2001, like the protagonist in Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway, lives a Mrs. Dalloway-like life, busy preparing and hosting parties all day. She has a girlfriend of 10 years, Sully (the same name as Mrs. Dalloway's friend in the novel), a daughter Julian who has grown up, and a confidant friend of a terminally ill poet and writer Richard (also the same name as Mrs. Dalloway's husband in the novel), who is also her former lover, but this life brings her more loneliness and emptiness.
Clarissa Vaughan
In this way, the film combines three women of different time and space to narrate the story in one day, feel the pain and struggle of the three women, and explore the awakening of women's consciousness.
Laura in Los Angeles in the 50s, seems to be a happy family life, a bright and beautiful housewife, without Virginia's unfortunate fate and complicated experience, and Clarissa's life situation is also very different, and finally she fled her family, husband and young children, and really embarked on the road of self-awakening by her own efforts.
Let's see why Laura did this?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the context of the 01 era
</h1>
During World War II, men mostly went out to fight, and during this time, many jobs were done by women. After World War II, when men returned from the battlefield and began to work again, women were forced to return to the family and become housewives.
In the American society of the 50s, housewives were the home of most women, they were all vying for a good wife and mother, and the mainstream culture at that time also believed that being a good housewife was the most important job.
Housewife in the 50s
The rapid development of the US economy in the 1950s was known as the "golden age" of the economy, and it was also the "dark age" of Feminism in the United States. Because, World War II brought men a spiritual level of personal heroism and unprecedented superiority, and in the post-war "baby boom", many men think that their wives go out to work with decency, if life can still be lived, basically do not want their wives to go out to work, reality forces women to focus their lives on the family.
Housewives in the United States in the 50s not only married and taught their children, but also paid attention to dressing. The housewives of that time were dressed in exquisite and glorious manners. On the one hand, it is to please their husbands, and on the other hand, it is also to highlight their success and social status.
It can be said that women in this period are more vassals of the patriarchal society, self-worth is difficult to achieve, and behind the surface is the inner emptiness and helplessness.
In the film, Laura's husband, Dan, is a World War II veteran, with a stable and decent job, a house and a car, and a typical middle-class life with his wife and children.
The United States in the 1950s
In such a social context, women's sense of independence is not non-existent, but greatly suppressed, and countless women like Laura are suffering from inner struggles.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > 02 home environment</h1>
In the film, Laura's husband Dan, he got up early to make breakfast, in order not to disturb his wife's sleep, buy good flowers, take care of the children, etc., this series of details can be seen, Dan a good husband who cares about his wife and a good father who loves his children, is obviously a wonderful man.
Feminist films in the general sense always like to treat men as a negative or opposite, either a father who uses domestic violence, or a husband who uses domestic violence, as if only women who are at a disadvantage in the family and poor women can finally break through the family shackles to achieve female awakening and female liberation.
And Laura in the film seems to be living in a peaceful and happy family, with a husband who loves her and hurts her and a cute child, everything is so normal and beautiful, from the outsider's point of view, is it necessary for her to be painful, unhappy or even want to escape? Isn't it a pretentious pretense to eat enough? The film's foothold here is precisely what sets it apart from many feminist films.
Laura
In fact, the desire for personality liberation, living out of oneself, and realizing one's own value is the essence of human beings, but in the past long time, it has been bound and suppressed, especially for women.
According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, in which self-actualization needs are the highest level of human needs, a person strives to play their potential, achieve self-realization, and strive to become what she can become, so that people can get the greatest happiness.
In front of her husband, graceful manners, decent conversation, impeccable smile, Laura plays the role of a good wife.
When watching her husband drive to work, Laura stood in front of the window, put away a fake smile, her face suddenly lost its luster, fell into loneliness, all this in the film is seen by the son Richard, the son stands there looking at Laura, because he knows that every day the mother is like this, the father is in time and in the absence, is two faces.
Laura in real life has not been her real self, she knows it very well, so she will feel pain in her heart.
We can also deeply feel that in fact, Laura is not happy and unhappy, so why?
Because, she has long been tired of this day after day without self life, which is more obvious when she makes a birthday cake for her husband, making cake for the sake of making cake, in order to give her husband a birthday and a birthday, on the surface everything is orderly, serious and meticulous, in fact, it is not absent-minded, tasteless.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > 03 Emotional deficit
It can be seen that Laura does not love her husband Dan, and Dan is completely from his own point of view when telling the story of the two. Presumably, Dan meets Laura, the girl of his dreams, she is very fragile and shy and funny, so Dan hopes to start a family with her and start a new life.
The union of Laura and Dan was largely due to the war or the social environment of the time, and was not based on romantic mutual affection. It can be seen that Laura's emotional needs have not been realized. The so-called "happy life" now is just Dan's dream realization, which is not Laura's.
So the seemingly perfect life is a kind of bondage and shackle for Laura, and her heart longs to be the person she wants to be, not the way her husband wants her to be, because that is not the real Laura, she should love herself better, be herself.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >04 spiritual inspiration</h1>
That day, the neighbor Kitty suddenly visited, she and Laura had the same situation, the same housewife, because she was sick and needed to go to the hospital for a few days, so she asked Laura to take care of the family dog.
Kitty finds Laura reading Mrs. Dalloway and asks her what she's talking about? Laura said: "About a woman, a very confident hostess, she is going to throw a party, because she is very confident, so everyone thinks she is good, but she is actually not good. ”
Kitty heard Laura say this, as if hit by something, and put down the book, her voice choking. She has not had children because she is ill and needs surgery. Saying: "My body can't control it, I can only give it to a doctor I haven't seen", which makes Kitty very helpless, and after a conversation between the two, Laura feels empathy, thinking that she is not also unable to control her life?
Such a life is so painful that I feel that I cannot fit into the real world, so I impulsively want to end my life, as Written in "Mrs. Dalloway", and I think of suicide because of a small matter.
Before laura did this, she still calmly made a better birthday cake with her son Richard, cleaned up the house, and then walked out of the house, entrusted her son to others to take care of, and found a hotel by herself, hoping to end her life here in peace.
The moment she sent her son away, she cried bitterly, and the sensitive Richard seemed to feel that her mother was abandoning herself.
Laura didn't have the courage to commit suicide that day, but in the end she decided to leave the family and her young children and find a job alone in a library in Canada to make a living.
The decision to run away from home was extremely selfish and irresponsible as a mother, and she felt guilty about her young children, but she did not regret doing so.
Because, when a person has no other choice, regret is meaningless. The mother was also first and foremost an independent person, and in fact, in the end, her son Richard was understanding of her.
The above four aspects may be the reason why Laura Brown finally embarked on the road of self-awakening, in the American society in the middle of the 20th century, patriarchy prevailed, for an ordinary housewife, to be able to be true to her heart, brave to go out, even at the cost of abandoning children, and strive to achieve self-realization, it is really thought-provoking.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > written at the end</h1>
At the end of the film, in 1941, in Sussex, England, Virginia Woolf had just completed her last work, "The Curtain", and had a premonition that she would have another mental breakdown, and felt that she would never be better, so she left two letters, one for her husband Leonard and the other for her sister Vanessa, with her pockets full of stones and thrown into the rushing Osse River near home.
She said in the letter: "To see through life, we must face life truthfully, to understand its essence, and finally, after understanding the essence, we will love life, and then we will be willing to let go." ”
Virginia Woolf in 1941 finally practiced her own feminine consciousness with death; Clarissa Vaughn in 2001 finally realized her own feminine consciousness with return; and Laura Brown in 1951 finally completed her feminine consciousness by running away, Laura chose to live and realize herself, which is the most difficult road, so it is more worthy of admiration and touching.
The pictures in the text are from the Internet, if there is a copyright problem, please contact the author to delete!
Author's profile: Listen to and hear, objective, rational, positive energy of writing enthusiasts, useful, material, and quality text sharers, please comment and correct, thank you very much.