Character Clues

Character Analysis

Location

Location, location, location. Yep, the old saying applies to the novel's three protagonistsjust as much as it does to prospective homeowners. By telling us about the places where each of the protagonists lives (not to mention the places where they would like to be living), Michael Cunningham tells us a lot about the characters themselves.

Both Laura Brown and Virginia Woolf are living in the suburbs, and both of them find suburban life stifling. Laura feels oppressed by the expectations that define being a suburban housewife in 1940s America, and Virginia feels like she's missing out on all of the cultural and artistic life that she could access in London. Clarissa Vaughan is the only one of the novel's protagonists who loves the place she lives in—and, not so shockingly, she lives in a vibrant urban metropolis: the Big Apple itself.

By the end of The Hours, Virginia has convinced her husband to taker her back to London, Laura has run away to Toronto, and Clarissa is still going strong in New York City. These women are city girls, through and through, and they do what it takes to find a place that suits them.

Occupation

All three of the novel's protagonists have literary occupations. Virginia Woolf is a professional writer; Clarissa Vaughan is a professional editor and publisher; and, after she leaves her family and moves to Toronto, Laura Brown becomes a librarian.

Not only do these occupations help to characterize each of the novel's protagonists, but they also emphasize the fact that The Hours is, at heart, a Grade-A literary book. In fact, it's fair to say that the novel itself is in love with literature—it's basically Virginia Woolf fanfic, after all—and, together, its three protagonists form a literary holy trinity: writer, the editor-publisher, and reader.

Thoughts and Opinions

The Hours is light on action and heavy on thought, so it's no surprise that some of the strongest tools of characterization in its utility belt are the thoughts and opinions of its characters. In fact, we haven't done the precise math on this, but we're willing to guess that a good eighty percent of the novel's narration uses free indirect speech: the narrative voice that merges the narrator's thoughts, opinions, and feelings with the characters' own.

By giving us more-or-less direct access to the thoughts and opinions of its characters, The Hours gives us every opportunity to get to know those characters intimately.