Revisionist Melodrama

               The Hours, an enchanting film that follows the story of Virginia Woolf and how she came to write her novel, Mrs. Dalloway, portrays the protagonists of the film as characters in Woolf’s novel. Both characters, Laura and Clarissa, are on similar paths to the one that Woolf herself was on as she wrote her famous novel. They both discover their bisexual tendencies later in life. They are both depressed, contemplating suicide, and involved in romantic relationships that are seemingly going nowhere. The audience realizes at the end of the film that Laura’s son, Richard, is Clarissa’s former lover who is dying of AIDS. Once he dies, Clarissa briefly considers suicide, but restrains herself. Laura’s suicidal moment comes when she discovers she is bisexual; she also restrains herself, but flees from her family.

                Unlike earlier melodramas, which deal with the violation of the family unit within society, in the traditional venue of divorce and “rich-girl-marries-poor-boy”, The Hours introduces modern day variations of love into the film, which further violate the traditional melodrama family unit. In all three narratives of the film, Virginia’s, Laura’s, and Clarissa’s, the nuclear family unit is questioned in various ways. Virginia is in a rut with her husband: he is forcing her to convalesce in an environment which she doesn’t wish to be in. Her heterosexuality is then questioned when she kisses her sister. She has no children, unlike her sister, and because of her questionable sexual orientation and relationship with her husband, her traditional family unit is not typical to society. Similarly, Laura was a loner in high school, and she still doesn’t fit in to the typical upper class society that her peers are members of. She also is of questionable sexual orientation, and she flees from her family. Her flight ruins her children’s lives and supposedly causes her son to become gay: a definite violation of traditional families. Lastly, Clarissa discovered her bisexuality later in life, and is now in a dead-end relationship with her female partner. Her daughter is upset with her, and Clarissa is depressed. Her family is seemingly the most untraditional of all the families in the film. All three untraditional families in the film further extend the violation of traditional nuclear families in melodramas.