Tara Wall

Module A Summary

Overarching thesis:
A study of a textual conversation allows responders to gain insights into the value of
freedom to the individual, highlighting how the value of freedom has withstood time and
place. In both Virginia Woolf’s Modernist novella Mrs Dalloway (1924) and Stephen Daldry’s
postmodern filmic reimagining The Hours (2002), the portrayal of individuals for freedom,
from both mental ill health and the narrow confines of womanhood, highlights the
universality of their experience and ultimately strengthens the power of both texts to
represent and challenge notions of freedom for human beings.

Introduction:
A study of a textual conversation allows responders to gain insights into the value of
freedom to the individual, highlighting how the value of freedom has withstood time and
place. In both Virginia Woolf’s Modernist novella Mrs Dalloway (1924) and Stephen Daldry’s
postmodern filmic reimagining The Hours (2002), the portrayal of individuals for freedom,
from both mental ill health and the narrow confines of womanhood, highlights the
universality of their experience and ultimately strengthens the power of both texts to
represent and challenge notions of freedom for human beings. Both authors portray
characters who have similar experiences across texts, presenting both resonances and
dissonances as influenced by their respective context and therefore highlighting the human
experience and the values associated as one that transcends time and place. These
resonating values are clear, particularly in the depiction of individuals’ need to attain
freedom from mental ill health and the narrow confines of womanhood as parts of the
human experience that have long been neglected in the world of literature. By portraying
these values as suppressed in society regardless of context, both composers allow insights
into the complex nature of the human condition.

Body Paragraph 1
Stephen Daldry has reimagined ideas about the experience of the struggle to attain freedom
from mentally ill health, first presented by Woolf in Mrs Dalloway, highlighting both texts as
integral through the portrayal of mental illness as universal, something that all audiences
can relate to, regardless of context.

Body Paragraph 2
Stephen Daldry similarly reimagined the experience of women struggling for freedom from
the narrow confines of womanhood, first presented by Woolf, to better reflect his own
society, but also highlighting the fact that these same ideas about women have not
changed, providing a valuable critique of his postmodern society.
Tara Wall

Quote list
Mrs Dalloway
- ‘Septimus would cry that he was falling down, down into the flames!’
- ‘Both Dr Holmes and Sir William Bradsham said excitement was the worst thing for
him’
- ‘Holmes was at the door. “I’ll give it to you!” he cried, and flung himself violently
down onto Mrs Filmer’s area railings’
- ‘Did it matter that Mrs Dalloway must inevitably cease completely?’
- “This being Mrs Dalloway. Not even Clarissa anymore. Mrs Richard Dalloway”
- “Decorate the dungeon”
- ‘A man in grey was actually walking towards them.. It was Evans! He had no mud on
him, no wounds. He was not changed’
- ‘The world wavered and quivered and burst into flames’
- ‘He thought of her impeccably wise.. He dreamt of her.. Wrote poems to her’
- ‘Mrs Dalloway always had the feeling that it was very very dangerous to live even
one day’
- ‘Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate… There was an
embrace in death”
The Hours
- “I am only staying alive to satisfy you, Clarissa”
- “It’s a terrible thing, to outlive your entire family”
- “Someone has to die in order for the rest of us to value life more. It’s contrast”
- “Clarissa Vaughan, always throwing parties to cover the silence”
- “I am ungrateful? You call ME ungrateful? My life has been stolen from me! I’m living
in a town I have no wish to live in, living a life I have no wish to live. How did this
happen?”

Comparative
- Both Virginia and Laura see suicide as the ‘only way out’
- “A woman’s whole life in just a single day. Just one day. And in that day, her whole
life”

Form in Mrs Dalloway Form in The Hours

- Modernist novella (1924) - Contemporary film (2002)

- Temporal markers - Triptych
- Links to the vicissitudes of - Virginia Woolf
life - Laura Brown
- Parallel characterisation - Clarissa Vaughan
- Septimus and Clarissa - Interior monologue
- Interior monologue - Cross-cutting
- Stream-of-consciousness - Intertextuality (textual
Tara Wall

conversations)