Women and the Patriarchal Society in Michael Cunninghams...

Women Pressured by the Demands of a Patriarchal Society in Michael Cunninghams The Hours In Michael Cunninghams The Hours, Laura Brown, one of the novels protagonists, is trapped by the responsibility of being a housewife and mother. Cunninghams story uses one of Virginia Woolfs works, Mrs. Dalloway, as a template to weave the lives of three women together in a narrative delicately split into three branching tales that echo each other. One branch of the story leads to a fictional account of Virginia Woolf creating the first draft of her famous novel. A second narrative in Cunninghams tale is that of Clarissa Vaughn - a woman whose life mirrors that of Woolfs fictional character Mrs. Dalloway. The final woman in the trio of†¦show more content†¦. . for which she is not adequately rehearsed (43). Sullerot explains this with: The underlying reason being that the position of women has always or nearly always been defined in terms of their role. Women have always been given a specific role, mainly in the family, and their social role has evolved from it (Sullerot 13) . Laura is stifled in this traditional role; she seeks a sense of independence and privacy. Cunningham borrows these ideas of independence and privacy from another piece of Woolfs work, A Room of Ones Own. In Woolfs essay she stresses the need for a woman to have money and a room of her own. The money stands for the power to contemplate, and this power is the independence gained from the womans financial status (Woolf 110). Woolf also states, That a lock on the door means the power to think for oneself (Woolf 110). The room is a place of privacy that keeps out the world of man. While the context of Woolfs statements was meant to apply to women who wished to be writers, it also is applicable to the life of Laura Brown. Laura believes that she has a touch of brilliance that she carries around inside herself curled up like a tiny clenched fist (42). The protagonist finds herself wondering if she could ever create something great by unclenching the fist inside herself. Sullerot writes that women can be prompted by the tediousness