The Hours

Among the three heroines from the movie, I've chosen to debate about Laura Brown's issues and family matters. In the movie she is presented in 1951, as a young woman, wife and mother altogether, living in Los Angeles in a suitable house. Pregnant with her second child, Laura spends her days in her tract home with her timid, young son Richie. She married Dan soon after World War II, but she feels conflicted about her life and is suffering from malaise. Her disease makes her always feel a general discomfort and uneasiness, an "out of sorts" feeling, often the indication of an infection or other disease. They seem to have a perfect life, because Laura tries and makes efforts to be a perfect mother and wife, wants nothing else from her life, but to dedicate herself for them but is unhappy and feels a prisoner of her own home and to her own child and husband.

In this first fragment from the movie, we can see that Laura made an effort and together with her son prepared a cake for her husband's birthday, but she is all stressed about it, so she fails and makes an awful cake. Normally her husband would have no objection for it, because he loves Laura enormously and he would have accepted the cake and the gesture, but this is exactly why Laura throws away the cake eventually. This drama and this solemn air dominates in the her family, all because she feels miserable and considers her child a burden, which is why she treats him with awkwardness, you almost have the feeling that she is not his mother, but unfortunately she is, and many times, very annoyed with him. She cries most of the times, instead of being happy for the coming of the other baby, and now she throws away the cake with an extreme anxiety.

In the next fragment, we can see that she is all alone in a hotel room, for she left her son in the care of a neighbor, and thus escaped to be free from her burden. In the hotel room, she takes out many pills from her bag, which obviously shows that she tries to commit suicide, but before that, she takes out a novel, Mrs. Dalloway, written by Virginia Wolf, and begins to read it. She falls asleep afterwards and has a nightmare about her hotel room being flooded and that she drowns in her sleep. This nightmare suddenly wakes her up, and convinces her not to end her life, for she bursts out in tears and shouts with her continual misery, that she can't do it. What we can understand by this attempt, is that she wants something, she wants to be free but is not yet ready nor selfish, and doesn't want to cause death to her unborn child either, and perhaps eternal pain t her husband and son.

Now, in this other fragment we see that the family is at home, Laura made another, a much better cake for her husband and they all seem very happy. Her husband is actually content of the surprise his wife gave him, and all the warms feelings surround him, but Laura acts with a mere forced kindness, something that little Richie feels and has a grave look when he looks at his parents. Laura tries in vain to be tranquil, she just cannot find any comfort in her role as a housewife and lastly obtains what she wants.

She does not kill herself, but in this last fragment we can see that she is an old woman now and pays a visit to her daughter-in-law, Clarissa Vaughn, the ex-wife of her son Richard, who also recently killed himself, for suffering the same disease his mother did. He was a renamed novel writer and won a prize, but he was still discontented of it, and decided to end his life. From this tete-a-tete between Clarissa and Laura, we find out that Laura eventually left her family, merely to live alone. She gave birth to a girl, but she died, also her husband as well, so the whole family broke into pieces after the mother took her departure.

What I deduced from her act, is that indeed she was a sick woman, never contented with anything, though by many others she was considered a lucky woman. A good husband and healthy children are not something that every woman owns, therefore throwing such a blessed fate through the window, can be explained only by a disease of the mind.

However this disease could have been defeated, if she had had the will to fight against it, but she was not strong enough, she was cruel and coward. By killing herself she would have caused the pain of many, and the death of her unborn baby, still she did did not commit it, however, in the end left them all, just to be alone, what is an act of selfishness, and a great lack of maternal feelings.

Living all those years and never returning to see her children, is something unconceivable for many people and she doesn't even try to justify her act. Having though a slight feeling for her son Richard, she does come back when she hears that he killed himself, which means that deep in her heart she must have loved them all, but her sickness ruled over her, she was just not a woman fit to be a housewife and a mother.

Prezentarea personajului din romanul The Hours