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Laura Brown And The Hours Comparison

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In The Hours, Michael Cunningham tells the story of three troubled women. Two of them, Virginia Woolf and Laura Brown, struggle with the similar problems. Significant changes are made by characters to deal with the sense of not belonging. The sense of not belonging affects both characters in two ways: mental suffering and motivation for committing suicide.
Laura and Virginia suffer mentally at two points in the story. The first time is when Laura feels that she does not belong to her family with Dan and their son, Richie. For example, when she thinks that “[I] do not dislike [my] child, do not dislike [my] husband. [I] will rise and be cheerful” (41) before going downstairs to meet them. This quote suggests that she feels like a stranger to …show more content…

The first time is when Laura is at the hotel reading Mr. Dalloway because she is disgusted of taking care Richie. For example, she thinks that “[I] can decide to die… [I] can leave them all behind—[my] child and [my] husband and Kitty, [my] parents, everybody” (152) in the middle of reading. This quote suggests that Laura is considering committing suicide in order to escape from her problems, such as the isolation from her family and the homosexual relationship with Kitty. The second time is when Virginia cannot bear her mental illness anymore. For instance, in the letter for Leonard, she says “I feel certain that I am going mad again: I feel we cannot go through another of these terrible times. And I shant recover this time” (6). This quote indicates that Virginia has had enough of her disorder and does not want to become a burden for Leonard that prevent him from moving on. In addition, during the walk to the rail station, she feels “the nearness of the old devil… the devil is a headache… the devil sucks all the beauty from the world, all the hope, and what remains is a realm of the living dead—joyless, suffocating” (167). The confinement in Richmond has deteriorated her insanity, and thus, causing her to commit suicide. The sense of not belonging leads to the characters’ suicidal thoughts.
To conclude, both Laura and Virginia in Michael Cunningham’s The Hour suffer from the sense of not belonging. Laura

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