‘The Hours’ breaks the frozen sea within us
February 5, 2006 | 12:00am
This Week’s Winner
Rodrigo V. dela Peña Jr., 24, graduated from UP Diliman with a degree in Political Science. He has attended two national writers workshops (one in Baguio and another in Iligan) as a fellow for poetry and has published his poems and stories in various publications. He is currently a writer in an events company in Makati.
Ihad never heard of Michael Cunningham until I watched the film version of The Hours, which I adored primarily for its exquisite cast – Nicole Kidman, "uglified" by a beaky prosthetic nose; Meryl Streep, who was outstanding as usual; and Julianne Moore, a revelation in her role as a seemingly perfect housewife in the suburbs (à la Desperate Housewives, late 1940s style).
When I finally got hold of the book, I was awed. It was, and still is, one of the most beautifully written novels I have ever read. Page by page, I relished Cunningham’s delicate prose, amazed by his uncanny gift of revealing a character’s innermost longings, as though using a can opener on someone’s skull to get into her mind.
The Hours chronicles a day in the life of three women. There is Virginia Woolf, composing her novel Mrs. Dalloway in 1923; there is Clarissa Vaughn in New York at the end of the 20th century, preparing a party for a friend (who fondly calls her "Mrs. Dalloway"); and there is Laura Brown, a housewife in the suburbs of Los Angeles in 1949. Though these women live in different time periods and in different places, their lives are intertwined by their thoughts and feelings, their ideas about the world, their consuming desires.
The novel begins with Virginia Woolf going to a river, filling her pockets with stones, and drowning herself. Why a brilliant mind would choose to end her life is a puzzle that confounds. And it is the most basic question – why live? – that Cunningham explores in succeeding chapters without falling into the trap of being didactic or sentimental.
I must admit that I see a part of myself in each character. In Clarissa I recognize my gratitude for the sheer fact of being alive, living for living’s sake, as she asks, "Why else do we struggle to go on living, no matter how compromised, no matter how harmed?" I love the way she takes pleasure in life’s little details: "Wheels buzzing on concrete, the roil and shock of it; sheets of bright spray blowing from the fountain as young, shirtless men toss a Frisbee…; the bleat of car horns and the strum of guitars…; leaves shimmering on the trees…" and so on.
Yet there remains a smidgin of self-doubt despite the profusion of such details. Sometimes I share Laura’s quiet anguish, her struggle to break out of a stifling middle-class existence. Married to a war hero, mother to a precocious child (and expecting another one), she seems to have it all and still she thinks of her husband: "Why does he desire nothing, really, beyond what he’s already got? He is impenetrable in his ambitions and satisfactions, his love of a job and home."
Of the three women, it is Virginia Woolf who suffers the most; it is she who wrestles with the angel, or as she calls it, "the old devil." To her, "the devil is a headache; the headache is a voice inside a wall; the devil is a fin breaking through dark waves." I am far from suicidal but I understand the torment she endures in the novel. What I find most admirable about Cunningham’s Woolf is her highest devotion to art, her dedication to writing her own version of truth.
These characters mirror each other’s actions, seeking transcendence in mundane situations. For instance, Laura, while baking a cake for her husband, undergoes "a subtle but profound transformation, here in this kitchen at this most ordinary of moments." Even with the grand theme that the author tackles, he anchors the novel on such familiar moments we can all relate to.
Cunningham allows us to inhabit the skins of his characters by occasionally wandering into poetic stream-of-consciousness, a technique which Virginia Woolf herself perfected. The effect is nothing short of wonderful. He weaves his sentences so skillfully, creating a seamless tapestry that connects three different women separated by decades. Now and then I find myself opening the book at a random page, if only to savor Cunningham’s words and reflect on his insights about love, art, and life in general.
In the end, Clarissa arrives at this realization when she comes face-to-face with an aged Laura: "We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep – it’s as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we’re very fortunate, by time itself. There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more."
Whew! I get the shivers whenever I read that passage, which sounds life-affirming and sinister at the same time. Our faith in life is restored, it’s true, yet there is a gnawing sense of dread in a future where death is, ultimately, the only certainty.
Franz Kafka once wrote that a book should serve as "an axe to break up the frozen sea within us." The books that matter should be able to stir us from complacency and uplift our spirits. Rare is the writer who can do that in contemporary literature. With his novel The Hours, Michael Cunningham achieves Kafka’s vision with clarity and grace.
Rodrigo V. dela Peña Jr., 24, graduated from UP Diliman with a degree in Political Science. He has attended two national writers workshops (one in Baguio and another in Iligan) as a fellow for poetry and has published his poems and stories in various publications. He is currently a writer in an events company in Makati.
Ihad never heard of Michael Cunningham until I watched the film version of The Hours, which I adored primarily for its exquisite cast – Nicole Kidman, "uglified" by a beaky prosthetic nose; Meryl Streep, who was outstanding as usual; and Julianne Moore, a revelation in her role as a seemingly perfect housewife in the suburbs (à la Desperate Housewives, late 1940s style).
When I finally got hold of the book, I was awed. It was, and still is, one of the most beautifully written novels I have ever read. Page by page, I relished Cunningham’s delicate prose, amazed by his uncanny gift of revealing a character’s innermost longings, as though using a can opener on someone’s skull to get into her mind.
The Hours chronicles a day in the life of three women. There is Virginia Woolf, composing her novel Mrs. Dalloway in 1923; there is Clarissa Vaughn in New York at the end of the 20th century, preparing a party for a friend (who fondly calls her "Mrs. Dalloway"); and there is Laura Brown, a housewife in the suburbs of Los Angeles in 1949. Though these women live in different time periods and in different places, their lives are intertwined by their thoughts and feelings, their ideas about the world, their consuming desires.
The novel begins with Virginia Woolf going to a river, filling her pockets with stones, and drowning herself. Why a brilliant mind would choose to end her life is a puzzle that confounds. And it is the most basic question – why live? – that Cunningham explores in succeeding chapters without falling into the trap of being didactic or sentimental.
I must admit that I see a part of myself in each character. In Clarissa I recognize my gratitude for the sheer fact of being alive, living for living’s sake, as she asks, "Why else do we struggle to go on living, no matter how compromised, no matter how harmed?" I love the way she takes pleasure in life’s little details: "Wheels buzzing on concrete, the roil and shock of it; sheets of bright spray blowing from the fountain as young, shirtless men toss a Frisbee…; the bleat of car horns and the strum of guitars…; leaves shimmering on the trees…" and so on.
Yet there remains a smidgin of self-doubt despite the profusion of such details. Sometimes I share Laura’s quiet anguish, her struggle to break out of a stifling middle-class existence. Married to a war hero, mother to a precocious child (and expecting another one), she seems to have it all and still she thinks of her husband: "Why does he desire nothing, really, beyond what he’s already got? He is impenetrable in his ambitions and satisfactions, his love of a job and home."
Of the three women, it is Virginia Woolf who suffers the most; it is she who wrestles with the angel, or as she calls it, "the old devil." To her, "the devil is a headache; the headache is a voice inside a wall; the devil is a fin breaking through dark waves." I am far from suicidal but I understand the torment she endures in the novel. What I find most admirable about Cunningham’s Woolf is her highest devotion to art, her dedication to writing her own version of truth.
These characters mirror each other’s actions, seeking transcendence in mundane situations. For instance, Laura, while baking a cake for her husband, undergoes "a subtle but profound transformation, here in this kitchen at this most ordinary of moments." Even with the grand theme that the author tackles, he anchors the novel on such familiar moments we can all relate to.
Cunningham allows us to inhabit the skins of his characters by occasionally wandering into poetic stream-of-consciousness, a technique which Virginia Woolf herself perfected. The effect is nothing short of wonderful. He weaves his sentences so skillfully, creating a seamless tapestry that connects three different women separated by decades. Now and then I find myself opening the book at a random page, if only to savor Cunningham’s words and reflect on his insights about love, art, and life in general.
In the end, Clarissa arrives at this realization when she comes face-to-face with an aged Laura: "We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep – it’s as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we’re very fortunate, by time itself. There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more."
Whew! I get the shivers whenever I read that passage, which sounds life-affirming and sinister at the same time. Our faith in life is restored, it’s true, yet there is a gnawing sense of dread in a future where death is, ultimately, the only certainty.
Franz Kafka once wrote that a book should serve as "an axe to break up the frozen sea within us." The books that matter should be able to stir us from complacency and uplift our spirits. Rare is the writer who can do that in contemporary literature. With his novel The Hours, Michael Cunningham achieves Kafka’s vision with clarity and grace.
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