Three Women's Quest for Subjectivity in Michael Cunningham's The Hours

• Main Authors: Mann-chun Shen, 沈蔓君
• Other Authors: Yih-Fan Chang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/35147016132433083786

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 英語學系 === 96 === The thesis attempts to explore the subject-formation of the three woman characters, Virginia Woolf, Laura Brown, and Clarissa Vaughan, in Michael Cunningham’s The Hours. Cunningham’s The Hours, a homage to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, provides abundant textual sources to research on the development of female’s situation and how they quest for their subjectivity respectively in 1923 London, 1949 Los Angeles, and the late 1990s New York. To read the novel as a process of a female’s development of subjectivity from the late Victorian age to the present, this thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter One introduces the relationship between Cunningham’s The Hours and Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. It will also offer a brief overview of the issues of cultural/social impact on women, gender, sexuality, and the concept of subjectivity. Chapter Two aims to evaluate the Victorian patriarchal decorum and codes imposed on fictional Virginia Woolf. It will also try to discuss how Virginia quests for subjectivity by means of gaining financial independence and writing to articulate her inner self, though she cannot openly express herself or reveal her sexual orientation. Chapter Three focuses Laura Brown’s inner struggles between her life and the roles she plays as wife and mother. It also examines her longing for spiritual and sexual emancipation through discarding the role that the patriarchal society constructs for her as well. In this chapter, the ways in which Laura quests for subjectivity from a woman trapped in the heterosexual marriage life to a woman leading a life she desires by leaving her family behind and securing her financial independence will be further discussed. Chapter Four concentrates on Clarissa Vaughan’s brilliant enacting of Woolf’s protagonist Mrs. Dalloway in New York of the 1990s. In addition, her subjectivity of directing her life as a career woman and a lesbian mother, who has maintained her relationship with her same-sex lover for almost eighteen years, will be delineated in detail. Chapter Five the conclusion, offers a brief summary of all the major aspects and ideas mentioned in the previous chapters. Cunningham’s The Hours vividly portrays the issues of female dilemmas and struggles in their lives and, in a way, he helps them to voice out and find their way out. Most importantly, the novel ensures and expands Woolf’s work, Mrs. Dalloway, and her own spirit and soul in timelessness.