Miss. O. Alisha, M.A., M.Phil.

, (UGC)NET, (TN)SET,
Assistant Professor of English,
Thassim Beevi Abdul Kader College for Women,
8/93/94, Pearl Matriculation School Road, Kilakarai, Ramanathapuram. 623517
+91 8940089101, alishaoli230795@gmail.com

Intertextual Analysis of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway with

Michael Cunningham’s The Hours: A Postmodernistic Approach

Abstract
Postmodernism is a wide movement started from the late of twentieth century in the

disciplines of art, architecture, philosophy literature and criticism. It is not considered against

Modernism rather it is a reaction to modernism which is influenced by the disillusionment

after the two world wars. It included a variety of approaches which is well-defined by irony,

paradox, pastiche, irrational thought process. It did not insist the lamentation on the

disenchantment of the modernism rather it celebrated the fragmentation during the post-war

era. Virginia Woolf, a modernist English writer whose novel Mrs. Dalloway (1925) used the

modernist technique of stream of consciousness. She ended her life by suicide which is

always reflected in her literary works. Michael Cunningham, an American Novelist whose

work The Hours (1998) is an interwoven novella associated to the life of Virginia Woolf and

the characters in her novel Mrs. Dalloway. The paper focuses on the intertextual analysis of

the two novels especially with Pragmatic Intertextuality and Subconscious Pastiche. The

Postmodernism reading insisted to analyse the novel as modes of being which is shifted from

the modes of glitches.

Keywords: Disillusionment, Pragmatic Intertexuality, Subconscious Pastiche, Modes of

Being, Celebration over lamentation.

 Intertextual Analysis of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway with

Michael Cunningham’s The Hours: A Postmodernistic Approach

Postmodernism is a term used to denote the historical era which departure from the

period of modernism. It is a wide movement started from the late of twentieth century in the

disciplines of art, architecture, philosophy literature and criticism. It is not considered against

Modernism rather it is a reaction to modernism which is influenced by the disillusionment

after the two world wars. It included a variety of approaches which is well-defined by irony,

paradox, pastiche, irrational thought process. It did not insist the lamentation on the

disenchantment of the modernism rather it celebrated the fragmentation during the post-war

era. Postmodernism rejects the principles of modernism like morality, objective realism,

social construction, finding the meaning for the context and truth. It prefers the petty

narratives rather than the metanarratives.

Virginian Woolf, well-known modernist writer developed the narrative device, stream

of consciousness technique in her novels and pioneer in feminist criticism. Her well-known

works are The Voyage out (1915), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To The Lighthouse (1927) and the

feministic work A Room of One’s Own (1929). Virginia Woolf belonged to the Victorian

literary society but soon after the death of her mother, she got her first mental breakdown.

She was sexually abused by her own step-brothers from the age of six which again got her

into the mental agony. After her sister and father’s death on her teen she got her next crisis

which resulted in her first suicide attempt by throwing herself from the window at the age of

22. After married to Leonard Woolf, she struggled a lot with the psychological disease called

Bipolar disorder and most of her successful novels were written under treatment. In her last

time, she could not bear with her mental illness she attempted suicide for the third time by

drowning herself in the river Ouse ended her life.

 Michael Cunningham, the successful American novelist and screenplay writer and a

senior professor of creative writing at Yale University. He wrote seven novels, few short

story collection and screenplay for some films. Out of that his best known work is The Hours

(1998) won the PEN/Faulkner award and Pulizer Prize for Fiction in 1999. The novel is

adapted into film in 2002, which got the prestigious Oscar award for Best Picture and Best

Actress. The novel is an interwoven three novella associated to the life of Virginia Woolf and

the characters in her novel Mrs. Dalloway.

The novel describes the life of three women, Virginia Woolf, Clarissa Vaughn and

Laura Brown in one day. In the first part about Virginia Woolf is struggling with her own

mental illness on writing the novel Mrs. Dalloway in 1923. Next part is about an American

wife, Laura Brown in 1949 distressed with the married life reading the novel Mrs. Dalloway.

The last narrative is about the Clarissa Vaughn, bisexual actress who is hosting a part for her

dying writer friend Richard suffering from the deadly disease AIDS. The three narratives did

not intersect at any point rather the stories portrayed the writer’s mental agony which was

coincided with the other women in different time period.

The paper focuses on the intertexual analysis of the two novels especially with

Pragmatic Intertexuality and Subconscious Pastiche. The Postmodernism reading insisted to

analyse the novel as modes of being which is shifted from the modes of glitches. The paper

did not focus on the problems or changes of the women rather the novel The Hours, as an

interactive fiction about the women’s struggle for being. The novel itself considered as an

interconnected space to express the being of internal self which was suppressed in the dark

chamber by the social construction. The novel had the postmodernistic technique of Pluralism

which made Cunningham to give multiple interpretations about the psychological aspect of

the Victorian writer Virginia Woolf and her creation of the characters with suicidal thoughts

depicted the kind of escapism towards inner self suffocation.

 The Pragmatic Intertextual analysis described the relationship between the text and its

user as centre. The double pragmatic usage of intertextuality of the modern novel (The

Hours) with the alluded novel (Mrs. Dalloway) created a sense of discontinuity and

meaninglessness to the alluded text. Author codes the inner thoughts and feeling as the text

considered as the first user and the reader who decodes the text as the second user. The

misunderstanding of decoding the text is not to find the truth rather to discover the

intertextual relations among the texts. Cunningham tried to encode the decoding of Woolf’s

works. He did not see the novel as merely a document but the connection towards their own

self.

The prologue of The Hours started with Virginia Woolf’s suicidal note to her husband

and her sister Vanessa. She was not able to bear the headaches and inner voice which was

haunting her for the past years. Both of them did not give freedom to lead her own life that

resulted in the suffocation. The inability of the author’s mingling with the society is

considered as mental breakdown. It describes the writer’s awareness and hypersensitive

towards the beautiful environment outside the four walls.

In the beginning chapter of The Hours, Virginia Woolf is in the midst of writing her

novel Mrs. Dalloway. The lingering of her mind induced her to create the character Mrs.

Dalloway not to depend on others rather she should make herself happy. “She picks up her

pen. Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself” (Mrs. Dalloway: 35). The same

line from Woolf’s novel used in the chapter of Virginia Woolf struggle to create the character

and it was the opening line of the chapter of “Mrs. Brown”. Laura called as Mrs. Brown

deeply involved herself in reading Mrs. Dalloway continuously for the past two hours. The

frustration of her boredom domesticated life paved the way of suicide is the best choice for

escapism.
 Writing in that state is the most profound satisfaction she knows, but her

access to it comes and goes without warning. She may pick up her pen and

follow it with her hand as it moves across the paper; she may pick up her pen

and find that she’s merely herself, a woman in a housecoat holding a pen,

afraid and uncertain, only mildly competent, with no idea about where to

begin or what to write. She picks up her pen. Mrs. Dalloway said she would

buy the flowers herself. (The Hours: 35)

The single line from the alluded text is used repeatedly in the modern text which

implied that Cunningham wanted to explain how much Woolf struggled to express her

thoughts. The continuous use of “she may pick up her pen” insisted the Woolf forced herself

to indulge in creative writing.

In Freudian terms of Id, the desires suppressed in the unconscious state of mind

should express in the form creative writings. Cunningham decoded Woolf’s suppressed

thought writing is a way to escape from the harsh realities. In spite of that, she had a longing

for death which made to create the suicidal scenes in her novel. Woolf tried to end her life by

jumping from the window at her teens. The same suicidal picture was portrayed in Mrs.

Dalloway. Septimus, a second world war solider suffered from psychological disorder called

Shellshock. Woolf used her own personal experience of jumping from the window for

Septimus suicide which was also used by Cunningham in Richard’s death.

The intertexual relationship between the two novels had the same refrain of suicide,

kisses, sexual ambiguity and morality. For the readers, the suicide of Woolf and Septimus is

resulted from the mental disorder and Richard’s suicide is from the fear of deadly disease

AIDS. The reason for the suicide is not just a physical or mental illness but the surroundings

forceful influence the people in the name of treatment. Septimus is considered as the mouth
piece of Woolf. He found comfortable zone even in his own mental illness. When his wife

and doctors forced him to become normal and wanted them to connect with the society. In the

name of connecting with the society they used treatments, medicines and therapies disturbed

the state of mind which intended them to choose suicide as an escape from the circumstance.

The next analysis moved towards the sexual identity. Virginia had a good married life

with Leonard but she has a longing for same sex long which is exhibited her love for Sally

Sexton in Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf’s kiss on the lips of her sister and Clarisssa in The

Hours. Then the marriage life of the characters and their attitude towards marriage is quiet

complicated. Mrs. Dalloway and Sally Selton often discussed the marriage as a disaster in the

life “they spoke of marriage always as a catastrophe” (Mrs. Dalloway: 159). Not only in this

novel, Woolf’s many works had the reference for homosexual identity. Cunningham

reinterprets the exhibition of morality for a writer or a woman in the England Royal Society

is also a reason for losing mental stability. Any work of art should express the unconscious

suppressed desire

Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn

with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The

whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there

she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present,

wrapped up, and told just to keep it, not to look at it — a diamond, something

infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and

down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the

religious feeling! (Mrs. Dalloway: 63)

 The postmodernistic reading of the texts represented the way of reality existed only in

the languages that the authors use. It rejects the idea of finding the truth of the test and there

is no absolute truth outside the text. Only through writing and reading, one can analyse or

interpret the text and it is not a duty for a reader to find out the meaning. The readers mind is

preoccupied with a complicated system of representation. The decentering of the subject and

the meaning with give multiple narratives are fictive itself. Virginia Woolf’s novels are

examined from single eye of stream of consciousness but Michael Cunningham used many

postmodernistic elements with fragmented and artificial narratives that decoded few ideas of

the writer. Intertextual Analysis insists to read the text in irreversible and non-linear

chronological order to explore the hidden meaning or interpretation.

Works Cited

Cunningham, Michael. The Hours: A Novel, Picadar Modern Classics, United States. 2000.

Print.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway, Maple Press, India. 2017. Print.

http://jultika.oulu.fi/files/nbnfioulu-201306111597.pdf

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/mrs-dalloway

https://dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/209938/On%20buying%20flowers%20and

%20other%20%28not%20so%29%20ordinary%20events.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y