THERE IS AN EMBRACE IN TEXT – INTERTEXTUAL CONNECTION OF MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM–S NOVEL THE HOURS AND VIRGINIA WOOLF–S MRS DALLOWAY

Abstract

The paper analyses intertextual connection between Michael Cunningham–s novel The Hours and Virginia Woolf–s Mrs Dalloway.

We have started from Virginia Woolf–s novel and pointed to its most important motifs and characteristics, including „the animating principle of life” which, according to M. J. Hughes, represents the affirmation of life and which is present in Cunningham–s novel as well. This principle is epitomized in the main character – Mrs. Dalloway. Septimus Warren Smith represents her antipode but also her double. While Clarissa Dalloway, the perfect hostess, „plunges” into life, this poet, suffering from post war trauma, „plunges” into death by committing suicide at the end of the novel. The revelation which comes to Mrs. Dalloway when she learns about his death is a final connection between these two characters. Throughout the novel Virginia Woolf cites the verses from Shakespeare–s Cymbeline which also act as a unifying factor of the book. These verses carry out the message of immortality of art and human creativity.

The third part of the paper deals with Cunningham–s novel and the way it repeats some of the situations, characters and even phrases from Mrs Dalloway. Cunningham ‘borrows– the title of his book from Virginia Woolf, since the Hours was the working title of Mrs Dalloway. The main characters from Mrs Dalloway have their doubles in The Hours – Clarissa Dalloway is Clarissa Vaughn, called „Mrs. Dalloway” by her friend and lover Richard Worthington Brown, a poet suffering from AIDS. His character unifies three characters from Woolf–s book – Richard Dalloway, Peter Walsh and Septimus Warren Smith, since he also commits suicide at the end of the novel. Other characters in the Hours are Virginia Woolf and a housewife Laura Brown partly taken from Woolf–s essays „Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown” and „Character in Fiction”.

We have analyzed different motifs (time, identity, death, etc.) in the Hours which are „copied” from Mrs. Dalloway and „pasted” into Cunningham–s novel with variations. In this way they represent a pastiche - a specific manifestation of postmodern intertextuality.

Our aim has been to show that intertextuality represents an enormous network of texts within which Cunningham–s text has its source not only in Woolf–s text, but also in other texts and discourses. The adaptation of the Hours into the film in 2002, after several ecranisations of Mrs. Dalloway adds richness to postmodern polyphony.