The Hours

Virginia walks, planning Clarissa Dalloway’s character arc: When she’s still a young woman—still in her “girlhood”—she’ll have a love with a girl, see a free future ahead of her, forsake it for a man, and finally kill herself in middle age over something trivial. As she passes a woman who gives her a judgmental look, Virginia realizes she’s been talking to herself. She despises the parochial, suburban life the woman represents. Though her eight years in Richmond have largely cured her of the headaches and voices, she longs to return to the dangers of the city.

Virginia pauses before reentering Hogarth House to re-inhabit the character she feels she must play for the sake of others, and to retain her mental health. She imagines herself as both author and character in a real-life novel of which Leonard, Ralph, and Nelly are readers. The persona she plays is healthy and impeccably social:

[A] serene, intelligent woman of painfully susceptible sensibilities who once was ill but has now recovered; who is preparing for the season in London, where she will give and attend parties, write in the mornings and read in the afternoons, lunch with friends, dress perfectly (100-01).

Virginia wonders how different English literature would be if she could make Mrs.