(Courtesy of Michelle M.J. Aquing. Used with permission.) Michelle Aquing Creative Spark Section 2 Essay 2 Revision 2 November 27, 2004 To whom much is given, much is expected - Luke 12:48We expect those endowed with a gift - be it artistic, intellectual or circumstantial - to cultivate that gift and use it as a vehicle for excellence in life. In the movie The Hours Virginia Woolf, the 20th Century British author; Laura Brown, a doted-upon 1951 Los Angeles housewife; and Clarissa Vaughan, a 2001 New York editor; struggle with their gifts and the expectations they, and others, have for themselves. All three women are obsessed with finding the right balance between living, freedom, happiness and love. The Hours attempts to use one day to reflect Woolf's life and the impact her work has had on others. In the movie, Woolf is writing Mrs.Dalloway which Brown is reading and Vaughan sort of lives out. Woolf's novel connects the three women and affects their actions. It should be noted that Vaughan gets a lot less attention than Woolf and Brown and seems to be more of a manifestation of Mrs. Dalloway. Vaughan, like Mrs. Dalloway, is a great party planner and is in the process of planning a party for a friend. Vaughan also projects Mrs. Dalloway's outward confidence and inward confusion. 1THE GIFTS AND THEIR PRESSURES A main theme throughout the movie is freedom. All three women actively seek it and at the movie's end each woman chooses what she thinks is best: Woolf drowns herself, Brown leaves her family and Vaughan finally lets go of her longtime friend and past lover, Richard. Each woman's decision, fueled by the circumstances which surround her, is reached after much thought and deliberation. Woolf's concern is Leonard's sanity and happiness. She realizes the great pressure she puts on him and sees her suicide as a way of freeing him from being responsible for her. Brown feels stifled by her doting husband and son and contemplates killing herself and her unborn baby but decides to leave her family after the birth of her child. Vaughan is forced to let go of Richard, at least physically, after he commits suicide. Each woman is under tremendous pressure from both herself and society. Woolf is a literary genius who is expected to develop and share her gift in spite of her illness and fears. Writing for Woolf is a means of expressing and exploring her thoughts: Her writings reflect an attempt to reconcile the dual nature of her sexuality, her unfulfilled desire to bear a child” she often compared the writing process with childbirth” her consuming fear of failure, and an overwhelming sense that she might lose control over her life” (Authors and Artists for Young Adults). Woolf, by simply writing how she felt, has penned works that have been praised as revolutionary and deeply moving. Self-expression allowed Woolf to tap into her inner self and create her masterpieces. 2Brown is privileged to have a husband who cherishes her and a son who adores her but she finds herself unhappy in her marriage. She is expected to be the loving and appreciative wife and mother but harbors feelings of incompetence and inferiority. This is aptly shown in the scene in which she attempts to bake a birthday cake for her husband. She expresses feelings of frustration and her incapacity to do something as simple as bake a cake to her neighbor, Kitty Barlowe, who Brown views as good at everything. Ironically the only thing Barlowe cannot do is bear children, something she craves the most. So while Brown envies Barlowe's all-knowing demeanor, Barlowe envies Brown's apparently happy life, especially Brown's ability to bear children. Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway which Brown is reading, catches Barlowe's eye and Barlowe eagerly asks what the novel is about. Brown explains: the book is about a woman who throws a party and she appears confident so everyone thinks she is fine but she isn't. As Brown gives this summary the viewer senses that she experiences the same feelings as the protagonist in the novel and this could be a possible reason why she makes the decisions she does; she is not happy. Vaughan, like Mrs. Dalloway, is good at throwing parties and is in the process of planning one in honor of Richard who has been awarded a prize for his literary work. She was renamed Mrs. Dalloway by Richard after their first night together. Since then it has been no looking back for Vaughan. Even though she and Richard both went on to lead homosexual lives, they kept in touch and when Richard contracted the HIV/AIDS virus Vaughan became his caretaker: visiting him often, cleaning his apartment and ensuring he had meals. So she never really lets go of him until he dies. Richard senses Vaughan's dependence on him and remarks to Vaughan that he thinks he is only staying alive to 3satisfy her. After analyzing his statement, Vaughan admits to her daughter, Julia, that she feels happy and useful only with Richard. After Richard's suicide Vaughan has to figure out what makes her happy. HAPPINESS In The Hours director Stephen Daldry sought to portray “how people lived their lives and the acute and profound choices people make and the cost of these choices in the search for happiness” (The Hours DVD Extras). This is aptly displayed by Brown and her choices. The movie allows the viewer to see Brown weighing her options and the effect her final decisions has on her son, Richard, and the effect he has on others. Woolf writes what she feels in an effort to identify and clarify what she feels and stands for. What she writes in her books reaches millions of readers like Brown who ponder on her work and draw on it for some sort of guidance and solace. Through each problematic and stressful situation the main characters (Woolf, Brown, Vaughan, Leornard Woolf and Richard) try to focus on their own happiness and contentment; something Daldry calls “the light at the end of a very dark tunnel (DVD Extras)”. For Woolf, her dark tunnel was her battle with depression. Her happiness was found in the process of writing which was ironically a taxing process for her (Authors and Artists). She was an experimental writer and her novels “demand engagement from a reader with the novel's structure as well as with its content” (Gay and Lesbian Biography). Woolf thought deeply about the content of her work and strove to instill 4some experimental element in each piece (Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography). For Brown it is