Meeting the Characters: The Hours and Mrs Dalloway

One of the things I loved about watching The Hours was being able to see the written characters in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway come to life. While each character in Woolf's novel doesn't necessarily have a counterpart in the film, there are parts of each character that become more visible and tangible on screen. Most characters in the film are a complex medley of the personalities and back-stories of the characters from the novel, but I think that in some cases, characteristics of a personality in the text became much more real to me when I saw them on screen.

I felt a lot of Septimus as I watched the character of Laura Brown baking a cake, going to answer the door, stepping in the hotel room. It was that smile, that smile that was supposed to be the icing on the cake in terms of her happy-50s-homemaker designation: it was lacking something. Her smile wavered on a line between self-assured and anxious, and it made me think of how Septimus must have looked to Reiza, to Dr. Holmes, to people on the street. I was reminded of the passage where Woolf describes Septimus's "hazel eyes which had that look of apprehension in them which makes complete strangers apprehensive too." Laura's smile had that exact effect -- it was unnerving but for no tangible reason, because she was smiling wasn't she?

In Dan Brown's character I felt like I met another good representation of a character from the novel, and this time I saw Richard. When I was reading Mrs. Dalloway I feel like I had never developed a solid image of Richard and his personality in my mind. I think I actually overlooked his character, because I was so into the personalities of Septimus and Clarissa and Mrs. Kilman. When I saw Dan on screen, though, I felt like I was watching Richard interact with Clarissa in the novel. He was hard to dislike when I got to know him, like Richard Dalloway, and I hadn't even expected to like him at first because I had assumed that he treated Laura badly since she seemed upset with him (and I expected the same of Richard since Clarissa was thinking so much of Peter for most of the beginning of the novel). Hearing Dan tell Laura how much he appreciated the cake and how happy he was to have her reminded my so much of how Richard rushed home to Clarissa to "tell her he loved her in so many words." Dan's content and completely oblivious attitude is a lot like Richard's in the novel; just like Dan has no idea that Laura is thinking about suicide, Richard has no idea that Clarissa is spending her entire day thinking of how her life might have been different if she had married Peter (a much milder oblivion).

While all of the characters in the movie represented some parts of all the characters from the novel, watching Laura and Dan in the film helped me build up a more tangible mental image of Septimus and Richard, respectively. It was great to be able to see with my eyes what Septimus and Richard might have looked like on that June day.