parallel characters in The Hours

After finishing The Hours, a lot of things that I was previously confused about started to make sense, helped by the discussion in class. The three stories in the movie and the book are all parallel stories that connect with each other. For example, I noticed how similar Virginia Woolf and the Richard Brown in the movie were. Both had natural curiosity that they satisfied, or at least tried to satisfy,  by asking the people in their lives to describe the most minute details of their days, nailing down subjects that they could later put into a novel. They even had similar writing styles, both being able to spend time and paper on things that seem inconsequential in every day life, such as buying nail polish or flowers. Others have compared the suicide of Richard Brown with that of Septimus Smith, but I agree with those who say it more closely resembles that of Virginia Woolf herself, because it was more personal and heartfelt in a way. They spoke their last words (actually the same words) to people they loved, and it was less of a spontaneous thing than Septimus' suicide.

I also found that Laura Brown and her son in the movie were similar, because both had that same feeling of hopelessness and both contemplated suicide, though only Richard followed through. However, the depression of Laura was actually paralleled with Mrs. Dalloway, because they both experience that feeling of having everything they could ever want in life and yet still feel trapped in their lives. Richard and Septimus, like Laura and Mrs. Dalloway, feel trapped in their own bodies, but in both of their cases they have had significant trauma I think this is an important distinction between the two types of cases, because Laura and Mrs. Dalloway seemed unsure of what they wanted, almost like they were just starting to explore in the world of depression and had to figure out how they felt about being depressed add what to do to fix it. Both, unlike Virginia, Richard, and Septimus found ways to lead their lives without taking their own lives, just by making changes. Mrs. Dalloway began to think more about what she had and less about the past life she used to have, while the more drastic changes made by Laura (abandoning her family) gave her true freedom, as she put it.

I actually found Laura not sympathetic. Even though it looked like she was having a tough time of it emotionally, she was everything in her life that many people have to work very hard for, and she threw it away because she didn't think that was the right life for her. She mostly made me mad, especially by the way that she left the so that loved her very much and depended on her, and left her poor husband as a single working dad of a newborn baby and a little kid. Maybe what she did was best for her, but to me it seemed very selfish and not thought through. It made me think of her as weak, which is a bit ironic because everyone already thought of her as a fragile person, which was part of the reason I think she hated herself and had to get away from her life. Was it her life that she hated and had to get away from? Or was it her own personality and inner self? News flash: changing your surroundings doesn't often change your soul.