• Humans are fascinated with death and the mystery of the afterlife. The characters in The Hours by Michael Cunningham all flirt with the idea of death. They fantasize about it, almost long for it at times. This is due to the lack of substance in their lives.
    The Hours follows four main characters and their battles with depression: Laura Brown, a perfect 1950’s housewife; Virginia Woolf, the famous novelist; Clarissa Vaughn, a turn of the century editor in New York; and Richard Brown, a literary genius and Clarissa’s dearest friend and ex-lover.
    The feeling of living but not being alive connects the characters. They are closest to being alive when they are closest to death. They feel trapped in their lives, leading to suicide attempts and feelings of emptiness.

    Laura Brown is a housewife in the year 1949. She has a husband and son and is pregnant with her second child. Laura finds her life mundane and depressing.
    She feels “as if she is standing in the wings, about to go onstage and perform in a play for which she is not appropriately dressed, and for which she is not adequately rehearsed.” (Cunningham, 43). Laura must always remind herself what is expected of her, what she should be feeling. She is disconnected from her family and daily life, and she just goes through the motions of day-to-day activities.
    Laura feels that her life and talents have been missed and unexplored. She resolves, “she will not mourn her lost possibilities, her unexplored talents (what if she has no talents after all?)” (Cunningham, 79). Her life has suffocated her. She has become an empty, impersonal shell, with no distinguishing qualities or talents. She could be so much more if only given the opportunity. She feels angry at this, and misplaces her anger onto her husband and child. She controls this anger, because she knows that they have done nothing wrong, while they are her ties to this mundane life.
    On top of Laura’s other frustrations, she finds herself sexually confused as well. After kissing her friend Kitty, she realizes that she “desires Kitty. She desires her force, her brisk and cheerful disappointment, the shifting pink-gold lights of her secret self and the crisp, shampooed depths of her hair.” (Cunningham, 143). This adds to Laura’s frustration with her husband, because she desires Kitty but instead she has Dan.
    All these pressures are symbolized by Laura’s cake, the failure of which leads her to consider and attempt suicide. She realizes she can’t commit the act with a baby still in her womb, but she thinks about death almost obsessively. She thinks it could “be deeply comforting; it might feel so free: to simply go away.” (Cunningham, 151). It is when Laura thinks of ending her own life that she has the most emotion, when she is most herself. This is when she is closest to being alive, a moment when she finally has control.

    It is in like fashion that Virginia Woolf views her own life. She is plagued by voices and fits of depression, and must teach herself to act normally. Virginia feels trapped and governed by doctors. She yearns for the city life.
    Virginia must act in order to appear sane to her family. Before she enters the house she “pauses to remember herself. She has learned over the years that sanity involves a certain measure of impersonation.” (Cunningham, 83). This causes her to become detached, because she goes through life portraying someone other than herself, someone who will gain the approval of her husband and doctors.
    Virginia is trapped, literally, in her life. She is confined by her doctors to a suburb that she hates. “It seems she can survive, she can prosper, if she has London around her.” (Cunningham, 167). She desires the thrill of the city, as sick as it tends to make her. Virginia loves London so much that she is willing to die to live there. Due to her medical condition, one of the things she loves most of all has been denied her. It is this thrill that both makes her feel alive and brings her closer to death.
    The factor that drives Virginia over the edge is the failure of her novel Mrs. Dalloway. She feels that she “is not a writer at all, really; she is merely a gifted eccentric.” (Cunningham, 4). Her novel symbolizes, in a way, the success of her own life, and her attempt to remain sane. All these factors drive Virginia over the edge, culminating in her almost inevitable suicide.

    It is a series of very similar events that lead to Richard’s suicide. Richard is not trapped by people or doctors, but by his ongoing battle with AIDS. He views his novel as a failure, despite its fame. He must act as well, but in a different way than the women.
    AIDS now rules Richard’s life. He is barely strong enough to leave his apartment. His “muscles and organs have been revived by the new discoveries but [his] mind seems to have passed beyond any sort of repair.” (Cunningham, 56). Richard is plagued by voices and hallucinations that make life both wonderful and terrifying at once. His disease has rendered him co-dependent, which depresses him, as he has always been so strong and autonomous.
    Richard puts on a persona, but not like the other characters in the book. He makes no attempt to hide his seeming insanity, but instead he pretends to Clarissa that he is content living like this, living only for her. He keeps this charade going, until he finally says, “I don’t know if I can face this. You know. The party and the ceremony, and then the hour after that, and the hour after that.” (Cunningham, 197). Only moments before death does Richard reveal his true feelings, the suffering he has endured due to his illness and the failure of his novel. It is only then that he can be truly honest with himself and Clarissa.
    Richard has deemed his novel a failure despite the praise it received, and this is perhaps his greatest disappointment. He feels unworthy of the praise, saying “I got a prize for having AIDS and going nuts and being brave about it, it had nothing to do with my work.” (Cunningham, 63). The prize, he believes, was given to him out of pity, and is more of a mockery than a merit of success. He wanted to write about everything, and he could not capture it in his novel. His attempt to write a meaningful novels fails, and his illness overcomes him. He feels remarkably alive, talking about the beauty of the day, when he jumps from a fifth story window, ending his life.

    These events have the most impact upon Clarissa Vaughn. Clarissa loves Richard, and mourns the loss of the future she could have had with him. She feels that her life is frivolous, and she is trapped in the past.
    The most important relationship in Clarissa’s life is her deep friendship and love for Richard. She almost constantly thinks of unexplored possibilities. She and Richard “might have been husband and wife, soul mates, with lovers on the side.” (Cunningham, 67). Clarissa longs to have stayed with Richard, to have made a life with him. She acknowledges that while both are sexually attracted to those of the same sex, they would make their marriage work on the deep love they feel for each other, though no longer sexual in nature. Clarissa and Richard are in many ways soul mates, and Clarissa still regrets not staying with him after their one summer together. Clarissa is trapped in her life by her own decisions of the past. This is perhaps worse than being trapped by others because she could have done something to prevent her present unhappiness.
    Though happily married with a wife and daughter she loves, Clarissa remains trapped in her past. She is always reminiscing. “Despite living contentedly with Sally, Clarissa is still racked by personal doubts about their relationship. Her desire to re-imagine her life in undiminished.” (Lane, 3). She experienced bliss when she was young, and she always expected it to continue, but she knows “that was the moment, right then. There has been no other.” (Cunningham, 98 ). Instead of Clarissa’s happiness continuing, it remained in that moment, and so did she. She cannot fully experience the present because she is living in the past. This traps her in a way that only she can solve.
    Since leaving Richard, Clarissa has lost the meaning in her life. She thinks, “she is trivial. She is someone who thinks too much about parties.” (Cunningham, 161). Clarissa knows that she fusses over things that don’t matter. The lack of meaning in her life diminishes her sense of self-worth. She has contempt for herself and her life, and she only feels alive when she is close to Richard, her dearest friend, and the pain he brings her. She feels the future she could have had, and the meaning that he gives her life.

    In short, the characters in the novel contemplate suicide because of emptiness in their lives. They are suffocating in life, so they look to death for feeling.
    Clarissa, Richard, Laura and Virginia all experience these feelings of entrapment. They long to feel alive and in different ways find this in death.
    Thus, The Hours deals with Laura Brown’s search for meaning, Virginia Woolf’s quest for freedom, Richard Brown’s suicide, Clarissa Vaughn’s mourned possibilities, and the desperation and sense of failure inherent in their lives. The characters share a somewhat romantic notion of death, and it is this underlying longing for it that unites them in their desolation.