Jorge Martinez

Enrique Wong
ENG 0100
October 5th, 2015
The Interlaced Lives
We think our life depends on the results of our decisions, We may try to
solve our problems alone, thinking that we are alone. Every single event
seems to be unique, but it is the same to say that any drop in the middle of the
ocean is different from each other. We suppose we are born free; however,
there are some things that we can't choose. Neither we can decide where and
when to be born, nor how our acts, our worlds, our decisions affect the life of
the others. At the end, we may not be so independent, so free as we may
think. This is the lesson that two women learned; without knowing it, their
lives were interlaced, in different and similar ways, by a country, a man, and a
book.
America is the main stage were the lives of Laura Brown and Clarissa
Vaughan are developed. Although the stage is the same, the time would be the
factor that would diverge their destiny. First, Laura's life is marked by several
problems due to her context. She is an unhappy housewife who is living the
American Dream. Besides her loving husband and her children, she feels
that she is kidnapped in her own house. She feels that her society, her family,
and herself is judging every act that she does, from her wife skills to the
thoughts she has about her love and her future. In addition, she has lesbian
feelings about her friend Kitty, but she can't tell her because same sex love is
forbidden. America of 50's is showed as a cruel and unfair world for depressed
and lonely women as Laura. In contrast, Clarissa is a modern lesbian New

Yorker woman, who works as a book's editor. She has lived with her girlfriend
Sally Lester for over 10 years; and in contrast from Laura, she has reared her
daughter Julia without social or economical problems. To sum up everything,
Clarissa is the owner of her life; living in a time where America has evolved to
a more civilized and respectful place.
America certainly is not the only thing that connected the lives of these
women, a man would share part of his life with them in very different ways;
with the former as a lonely son, with the other as an old love. The name of this
man is Richard or Richie, as he was called when he was a child. He was
Laura's son, and he grew up with several traumas due to Laura's actions. As
the movie suggests, we can imagine that Laura's sexual frustration could
have affected his own sexual orientation. Watching her mom kissing another
woman, on his dad's birthday, and in their home, could print on him some
insecurities about love, about the false family life that he was living. This is
not the unique gift that Laura gave to Richie, She also ran away of his life, of
his family. Richie grew up with the certainty that he was alone, with the
feeling that the person who should take care of him was the person who
disappointed him first. Maybe, for the rest of his life, he was trying to
understand why his mom left them, trying to fill up the holes of his heart with
pills, fleeting lovers, and poetry. From this nightmare, his life rambled until he
found Clarissa. Richard was her old college love. She supported him when he
was alone, suffering of AIDS, surviving in the jail his life had become. She
tried to make him happy, encouraged him to face his problems, and she even
attempted to make a party for him to celebrate the prize he had received. At
the end, the sorrow of his illness and the memory of his unforgiving mom led
him to take his life; however, he would said, You [Clarissa] were the most

beautiful thing that could have happened to my life (Daldry, The Hours).
Laura and Clarissa were two women that were born in different times, in
different places, in the same country. They marked and were marked by the
time they shared with Richie, a son and a love. The book may seems to share a
supernatural power over Clarissa and Laura, making them to live the same
day of Mrs. Dalloway. Nevertheless, the truth is that history keeps repeating
when society doesn't change. There were and there will be many ladies
Dalloway if as a society, we can not change. Many other women will have to
face similar problems if we keep discriminating love, ill people, and women
behavior. Maybe, we are not completely free, but we have the choice of
learning about our mistakes; of giving our best to the people we love; and of
overcoming the problems that the world sends to us. In conclusion, the future
of our society depends only on the the decisions we make. May we are what
society have done to us, but at the end we are the ones who take the final
choice. This choice is what makes us free.
Work Cited
The Hours. Dir. Stephen Daldry. Perf. Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Nicole
Kidman. Paramunt Picures, 2002, DVD.