An Analysis of the Three Female Characters in The Hours 《时时刻刻》中的三位女性人物分析文献综述

 2021-12-29 20:59:10

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文献综述

1.Introduction1.1 Research backgroundBorn in 1952, Michael Cunningham is well-known in the American literary world for his 1989 debut work, A Home at the End of the World, and The Hours is his third novel. Different from his two previous works, The hours is an experimental novel about Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, a famous British stream of consciousness novelist. Although there is no doubt about Mrs. Woolfs position in the modern literary world, her creative ideas based on disordered thinking activities are still very difficult to understand even today, and can not be accepted by most readers both abroad and in China. As an American writer, Cunninghams adoption of such a topic is undoubtedly a bold innovation.In the novel The Hours, he guides the readers through the sparkling consciousness of the characters in the novel in an amazing way, and then enters the spiritual world of Woolf. This wonderful technique has unparalleled originality. His writing practice has proved that Woolfs viewpoint in Modern Fiction: life is a halo of light, a translucent envelope that surrounds our consciousness from beginning to end.There are three main lines in The Hours, which narrate a day of three women: in the 1920s, Virginia Woolf was resting in Richmond, a suburb of London. While curing her neurasthenia, she began to conceive and create her work, Mrs. Dalloway, but her panic of life was accompanied her; In the 1950s, Mrs. Brown, a housewife, was pregnant and reading Mrs. Dalloway. Life made her despair. After not escaping from the dull life, Clarissa tried to commit suicide; at the end of the 20th century, Clarissa, a middle-aged female editor, was planning a party for her friend, but unexpectedly witnessed her friends suicide. From name to experience, all kinds of coincidences made her and Mrs. Dalloway have a close connection.The most important thing is that the author also refers to the text of Mrs. Dalloway in the text of the novel The Hours. This technique is very creative. Because this reference is not the explicit quotation of the text, nor the sequel in the general sense, or the rewriting and creation of the previous books and the same materials; instead, it is the use of symbolism to inset the two texts together obscurely, just like two sides reflecting on each other and proliferating in the dark. Cunninghams The Hours is a reappearance of the meaning of Woolfs life based on Mrs. Dalloway. It is a poetic meditation on Woolfs inner spirit.Although the novel The Hours has attracted the attention of many researchers, only a few of them focus on the three heroines themselves. In addition, the study of The Hours mainly focuses on the connection with movies or other novels. Therefore, in order to make up for the lack of previous studies, this paper aims to explore the analysis of three female characters in The Hours.1.2 Need of the studyThe Hours won Cunningham the 1999 Pulitzer Prize and the Pen / Faulkner prize. In The Hours, Cunningham shows the life, desire, and self-exploration of female characters. As soon as the novel was published, it was widely praised by the critics. Critic Brooke Allen believes that Michael Cunninghams moment proves once again that if a novelist has the right material, he can actually endow any subject with truth, poetry and intelligence. Most of the domestic discussions on this work focus on feminism, death and homosexuality. Although the critics are not sure whether Cunningham is paying homage to Woolf or having an equal dialogue with her, The Hours undoubtedly shows readers three full-bodied female characters.Therefore, it is necessary to study the characteristics of the three female protagonists in the moment in order to better understand Cunninghams expression of their pursuit of independence. This is beneficial to the other studies of Cunningham and his novels.1.3 Research purposesThis paper will analyze the three heroines in the novel from the perspectives of womens dilemma in the 1920s, womens struggle in the late 1940s, and womens freedom in the late 1990s, aiming to analyze the personality characteristics of the three heroines, so as to provide some enlightenment for the study of Cunningham and his works or help other feminist or intertextual studies.2.Literature reviewMichael Cunninghams novel The Hours was published in 1998 and gained the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN / Faulkner Award in 1999. Regarded as the modern version of Mrs. Dalloway, The Hours has been a heated topic in American Literature. In 2003, the film called The Hours came into being and won the Golden Globe Award, British Academy Award, and Oscar nominations many times that year. With the fever of the film, the heat of The Hours has swept across literary and movie fields, which has also led to the critics multi-level and multi-angle analyses of it. In the following part, abroad analyses and home studies will be summarized respectively.Since Michael Cunninghams The Hours connects both visibly and invisibly with the great English novelist Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway, it aroused various controversial opinions when published. In the beginning, many critics criticized its extreme resemblance to Woolfs, while others approved his boldness. Recently, the studies upon the relationship and the comparison between the two novels have become very influential. To some degree, there are many scholars who stress the intertextuality between Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours. Fadwa Abdel Rahman proclaims the original texts features of intertextuality with Mrs. Dalloway, of fragmentation and nonlinear narrative methods. Lorraine Sim researches into The Hours by considering the presence of Woolfs relationship to everyday life in the book.There are also many scholars and critics pay attention to that the modern one mimes the older one. Linda Pilliere wrote an essay Michael Cunninghams The Hours: Echoes of Virginia Woolf to show the echoing between the two novels. The Hours imitates Mrs. Dalloway and Woolfs life experience. However, The Hours is not a pastiche. Their writing styles are different. The Hours contains fewer shifts from one place and time to another than that of Mrs. Dalloway. And the lesbian theme is enlarged and acclaimed in The Hours whereas Mrs. Dalloway did not.Some critics try to excavate the reasons for Cunninghams choosing the single-day novel Mrs. Dalloway to rewrite. James Schiff in Rewriting Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway: Homage, Sexual Identity, and the Single-Day Novel by Cunningham, Lippincott, and Lanchester，points out. Therefore, critics are quite concerned about Cunninghams artistic handle of the real great literary figure Virginia Woolf.Cunningham puts more energy into describing Woolfs wish to break away with convention rather than surrender to ordinary life. Whats more, Spohrer in Seeing Stars: Commodity Stardom in Michael Cunninghams The Hours and Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway explores the phenomenon of star commodity.The probe into the themes is attractive. Many scholars put emphasis on the themes of death and life in The Hours. Justin Spring in Michael Cunningham narrates that the novel is a testament to the horrors and marvels of everyday life which implies something gorgeous and meaningful. Some critics emphasize the theme of the relationship between womens sudden enlightenment and material reality in The Hours. Ann Diefendorf OBrien in Dialogic and Material Influence on the Formation of Identity in Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway and Michael Cunninghams The Hours stresses that the protagonists in the books, though literary figures, convey a clue to think about how identity and self-recognition evolve within certain ideological backgrounds and how they are influenced by ones material, day to day situations and individual relationships.Based on the global background, Cunninghams The Hours was brought into China as soon as it appeared in America. As a whole, studies at home can be classified into the following groups which involve theories of feminism, existentialism, androgyny, intertextuality, and spatial culture, and also include theme and technique exploration and so on.Many scholars dote on the existential viewpoint. The researchers employ existential theories of Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and others to interpret The Hours and to comment on the womens actions of seeking identity and resisting patriarchy. Critical articles are, for instance, Xia Xiantaos Different Choices, Different Nature Sartres Existentialism Practiced in The Hours and Hu Yanfeis Womens Survival State from Mrs. Dalloway to The Hours.Since Cunninghams The Hours is a mime of Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway, the attention paid to the intertextuality between the two novels has been logical and undisputed. Regarding the theme, Xie Ye in the article An Intertextual Study of The Hours and Mrs. Dalloway stresses the discrepancy between females social role and individual consciousness and the conflicting arguments on the issues of death and life. Taking all the above into account, the author finds out that the focus abroad and our homes studies lie in The Hours narrative patterns, symbolic images, theme issues, intertextuality with Mrs. Dalloway, etc.References:Alley, H. (2006). Mrs. Dalloway and three of its contemporary children. Language and literature, 42(4), 401-419.Bell, A. O., McNeillie, A. (1984). The diary of Virginia Woolf. London: Hogarth.Cunningham, M. (2002). The Hours. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Cunningham, M. (2003). The hours brought elation, but also doubt. New York times, 152, 362.Goldman, J. (2006). The Cambridge introduction to Virginia Woolf. New York: Cambridge University Press.Hughes, M. J. (2004). Michael Cunninghams the hours and postmodern artistic re-presentation. Critique - studies in contemporary fiction, 45, 349-362.Levenback, K. L. (2000). The hours: A novel by Michael Cunningham. Woolf studies annual, 6, 198-206.Lisicky, P. (2004). On the hours talking with Michael Cunningham. Provincetown arts, 18, 40-41.Lois, W. (2003). The hours, by Michael Cunningham. Eugene weekly, 13, 25.Nicolson, N., Trautman, J. (1980). The letters of Virginia Woolf. London: Hogarth.Olk, C. (2005). Vision, intermediary, and spectatorship in Mrs. Dalloway and the hours. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.Roe, S., Sellers, S. (2001). Virginia Woolf. Shanghai: Foreign Language Education Press.Spohrer, E. (2005). Seeing stars: Commodity stardom in Michael Cunningham's the hours and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. The arizona quarterly, 61, 113-133.Spring, J., Cunningham, M. (1999). Michael Cunningham. Bomb, 66, 76-80.陈晓兰（2011），外国女性文学教程。

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