Mrs Dalloway and The Hours — Essay

Discuss how Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and Stephen Daldry’s The Hours explore ideas related to mental illness and trauma in ways that reflect their particular form and context.

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway explores the ideas related to mental illness and trauma through topics which were definitely present at the time of publication. Being set in roughly the same time period as its 1925 publication, the exploration of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or more specifically, ‘shellshock’, was a fitting one, as the topic was very much a taboo at the time, with the Woolf’s criticism of such treatment no doubt a controversial one. This would have definitely been a bold move by any author at the time, as the context of the story amongst the world situation saw it offer critique the norms. The adaptation of the novel into Stephen Daldry’s The Hours in 2002 again saw a fitting adaptation for that era, with the character of Richard Brown being represented as a sufferer of the then widespread AIDS epidemic, in contrast to Septimus Warren Smith’s shellshock.

It was clear from the beginning that the movie would be limited by its form, with aspects such as Woolf’s famous stream of consciousness not able to be fully replicated in a visual format with same conviction and flow as the novel version. However, it can be seen in the movie that a visual display of emotion can definitely come across as more powerful and invigorating than what is being described in the book. As with the book, it is forced to release the remnants of a greater…