Remember how we said that despite all of its tragedy and sadness, The Hours still ends by affirming the value of life? Well, the novel's closing paragraphs really drive that point home.
Just hours after Richard Brown's death by suicide, Clarissa Vaughan and Laura Brown are together in Clarissa's New York City apartment. Clarissa's partner and daughter have laid out tea and food in the kitchen, and the tired mourners are about to share a quiet meal before heading to bed. Here's how the novel closes:
Here, right here in this room, is the beloved; the traitor. Here is an old woman, a retired librarian from Toronto, wearing old woman's shoes.
And here she is, herself, Clarissa, not Mrs. Dalloway anymore; there is no one now to call her that. Here she is with another hour before her.
"Come in, Mrs. Brown," she says. "Everything's ready." (22.86-88)
Although Richard decided, in the end, that he couldn't face the hours that were left to him, Clarissa remains characteristically grateful to have yet another hour ahead of her—and, in all likelihood, thousands more after that. Although their late-night meal won't be the celebratory feast that Clarissa had planned for Richard, for the novel's surviving characters, it's a simple, quiet acknowledgment that life goes on.