How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
She walks out past one of the farm workers (is his name John?), a robust, small-headed man wearing a potato-colored vest, cleaning the ditch that runs through the osier bed. He looks up at her, nods, looks down again into the brown water. As she passes him on her way to the river she thinks of how successful he is, how fortunate, to be cleaning a ditch in an osier bed. She herself has failed. She is not a writer at all, really; she is merely a gifted eccentric. (1.1)
As Virginia Woolf prepares to drown herself in a river, her desolate point of view comes through in these thoughts about her accomplishments (or lack thereof). Like Richard Brown, this Virginia ends her life while thinking of herself as a failure—as someone who has failed to live up to her own expectations of what great writers can and should do.
Quote #2
Outside, beyond the glass, Richmond continues in its decent, peaceful dream of itself. Flowers and hedges are attended to; shutters are repainted before they require it. The neighbors, whom she does not know, do whatever it is they do behind the blinds and shutters of their red brick villa. She can only think of dim rooms and a listless, overcooked smell. She turns from the window. If she can remain strong and clear, if she can keep on weighing at least nine and a half stone, Leonard will be persuaded to move back to London. (2.28)
Eighteen years before her suicide, Virginia Woolf is living in Richmond, England—a suburb of London that's supposed to be placid and safe enough for her to stay healthy and sane. The only problem? She hates it there and feels stifled and bored.
Quote #3
Still, when she opened her eyes a few minutes ago (after seven already!)—when she still half inhabited her dream, some sort of pulsating machinery in the remote distance, a steady pounding like a gigantic mechanical heart, which seemed to be drawing nearer—she felt the dank sensation around her, the nowhere feeling, and knew it was going to be a difficult day. (3.4)
Of all three of the women who star in The Hours, Laura Brown is by far the most dissatisfied with her current situation. On bad days, she has to struggle just to get out of bed in the morning.