Among the many everyday tragedies that The Hours explores, illness is one of the most devastating. The novel's late-twentieth-century narrative grapples with the impact of the AIDS crisis in New York City's gay community, while its 1940s narrative hints at the consequences of undiagnosed PTSD, and all three of the novel's narratives depict the suffering caused by depression. As the characters live with and deal with the effects of illness in their lives, they're inspired to look for the moments that make life worthwhile, even in times of suffering.
Questions About Suffering
- How many characters from the world of Clarissa Vaughan are living with or have loved ones who are living with HIV/AIDS?
- What is Clarissa Vaughan's perspective on illness and suffering? Is it the same as Richard Brown's?
- As they are described in The Hours, what aspects of Virginia Woolf's periods of headaches and hallucinations parallel Richard Brown's experience of mental deterioration?
Chew on This
Although The Hours doesn't advertise itself as a book about the AIDS crisis, it does bear witness to that crisis in complex and moving ways.
A number of the novel's characters suffer from symptoms that readers today might associate with clinical depression or bipolar disorder, but the novel itself doesn't use any specific labels for those symptoms. In this way, it keeps the focus on the characters' lived experience more so than on any potential diagnoses.