harmony with city life much faster. City provides women with possibilities and new spaces for their self development. Wang Anyi ‘firmly believe that city supplies a better chance for women’s liberation’”[12].
In the beginning of Mrs. Dalloway, Wolf shows the heroine’s experiences of living in the modern big city—London: Clarissa Dalloway loves dancing and horse driving; she is fancy of walking in London’s avenues rather than strolling in countryside. London gives her the power and vitality, and Bond Street drives her crazy?Being different from most male writers living in city but deeply concerning of country, Virginia Wolf in Cunningham’s The Hours though far away from city, is sentimentally attached to that flourishing life in city. Virginia despises Richmond and is eagerly hoping returning her dreaming downtown city of London. Though Richmond does well in her disease, her one and only wishing is devoting again to the dangers of city life. “She will go, she thinks, to London; ?the half hour on train, the disembarking at Paddington, the possibility of walking down a street into another street, and another after that. What a lark! What a Plunge! It seems that she can survive, she can prosper, if she has London around her”[10] P107.
Modern women expose nakedly their desires of materials and yearnings for city. Consequently, Virginia would rather die in London buried with abracadabra and sane mental state, than corrupts and withers
26
away in cozy Richmond.
The motif of city for women stands for freedom and this intertextual resonance in The Hours helps readers to get a better understanding of women’s living condition, which belongs to the subject under cultural concession between agricultural civilization and industrial civilization.
2.1.5 Clock
All stories begin in morning, which The Big Ben and clock strike in Mrs. Dalloway to remind Clarissa Dalloway of preparing the party in hurry, welcoming old friends, etc. and symbolize the efflux of time. As a way of pastiche, Cunningham borrows “time” as a thread of plots, what’s more, clock motif (the feeling of anxiety and fidget caused by time’s propelling and forcing), can be found in Mrs. Brown’s story. She is supposed to prepare breakfast, Birthday Cake etc., rather than reading her favorite book in bed, because the clock tells her, it is the time to do so. Continuously reminded of her family role and domestic responsibility, Laura has always been subject to time. Similarly, V. Wolf in The Hours is also kidnapped by time. She looks at the clock on the table and finds it has two hours since she stars writing: she fails to return to London because of the clock time; and she is even forced by her husband to get to bed because it is almost eleven. However, as a negative parody, in the story of the end of the fast-food-life-stylized 20th century, when Clarissa Vaughan and Laura Brown meet, “According to the clock, it is ten
27
minutes past midnight”[10] P220 and it is the very time for everything to calm down and “Here she is with another hour before her”[10] P226. Time seems not all bad.
2.2 Intertextual Reinterpretations in Characters
Intertextual reinterpretation in Characters firstly lies in the names’ quotations. Clarissa Vaughan borrows her first name from Mrs. Dalloway, and Clarissa Vaughan’s lesbian lover Sally shares the same first name with Clarissa Dalloway’a best friend, Sally Seton. Richard Brown and Richard Wolf who is Virginia Wolf’s husband both in fiction and reality, are same first-named. One of the typical case of allusion in The Hours is Richard’s nicknaming Clarissa Vaughan as “Mrs. Dalloway”. Both of them prepared for party, have daughters who are symbols of beauty though they may drift their mothers sometimes; they are all thought being ordinary and filled with affectation by their male friends and ex-lovers，e.g. “She would marry a Prime Minister and stand at the top of a staircase; the perfect hostess he called her (she had cried over it in her bedroom), she had the makings of the perfect hostess,”[9] P4 and “thirty years ago, that under her private-girl veneer lay all the making of a good suburban wife.”[10] P16
Clarissa Dalloway kisses Sally Seton who gives birth to five children; Virginia Wolf kisses her elder sister Vanessa Wolf who gives birth to three Children, what’s more, ―Years ago, when Julian (her nephew, son of
28
Vanessa) was a baby, when Virginia and Vanessa were thinking of names for children and for characters in novels, Virginia had suggested that Vanessa name her future daughter Clarissa”[10] P116.
At the same time, I consider the three women in The Hours are the deconstruction of Mrs. Dalloway in the pre-text. Mrs. Dalloway is a divisive person: she is positive and cherishes life in one way, and then Clarissa Vaughan strengthens this specialty in The Hours; in another way, Mrs. Dalloway’s feeling of hollowness acts upon Mrs. Brown who has a seeming happy life; the appearance of Mrs. Wolf in The Hours echoes
[9] P6
Mrs. Dalloway, the former “had a narrow pea-stick figure”，thin and
elegant, and the later one is “has the austere, parched beauty of Giotto Fresco”[10] P114; and both of them love London.
Allusion and pastiche exist between“insane Septimus” and the Richard: the same brilliance, sentiment and chariness to life, self-communion, and even same “insanity” and the same fashion of suicides. The young Richard and Peter Walsh are both misanthropic and acute to banal and fusty life and society.
Peter Walsh in Mrs. Dalloway and Louis in The Hours illustrate parody intertextual reinterpretation. The former is the old flame of Clarissa Dalloway. When he is 53 years old, he has an uninvited visiting to Clarissa Dalloway after 5 years overseas at just before noon. While Louis in The Hours is much like to Peter Walsh with the same age,
29
similar appearances, experiences personality, and the same uninvited visiting to Clarissa Vaughan after 5 years overseas. But unlike the ex-relationship in Peter Walsh and Clarissa Dalloway, Louis and Clarissa Vaughan are rivals and compete for Richard. Louis is a gay and Peter Walsh is passionate in romance, they are all brave people who only bend over their own true feeling. The image of Louis is a successful case of parody of Peter Walsh in that the sentimental and tear-shedding Louis is funny and pitiable at the same time, leaving an effective impression on readers who read The Hours after Mrs. Dalloway. Readers tend to compare the two images and feel funny with the image of Louis.
The parody the plot of “somebody of greatness (in royal carriage goes by)” in Mrs. Dalloway turns out being Clarissa’s coming across Hollywood famous movie star who might be Susan Sarandon, Vanessa Redgrave or Meryl Streep in The Hours is very interesting. More highly entertainingly, the film adaptation is given with Meryl Streep playing Clarissa, which is, in my opinion, a fantastic conception and hypo intertextual expression between text and videos works.
2.3 Intertextual Reinterpretations of Themes 2.3.1 Insanity
Virginia Wolf writes a “sane person” and “ a insane person”and Cunningham plays with the notions of “sanity and insanity”, recognizing that there might be only a very fine line between the two states. The
30