A Spatial Perspective On Michael Cunningham’s The Hours

The Hours is the most well-known book ever written by MichaelCunningham, which won him the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in1998and thePen/Faulkner Award in1999. This book involves three women of differentgenerations affected by the book—Mrs. Dalloway, including Virginia Woolf in1923, Laura Brown in1949and Mrs. Dalloway in the late20thcentury. This bookhas been studied from the perspective feminism, intertextuality, modernism,existentialism, queer theory, etc., and has never been analyzed from the spatialtheory. Therefore, this thesis intends to study this book from the perspective of thespatial theory.Through studying the historical space, physical space, body space andpsychological space of the three heroines in the light of spatial theory, this thesisshows that women both in the Victoria period and in modern time, are all, to someextend, and in certain ways, restrained in small spaces. Some women arerestrained in their houses; some are trapped in the suburb, and even some modernurban women are unconsciously limited in their houses or other small spaces likedepartment stores. Therefore, a conclusion can be drawn that women nowadaysare still constrained in the limited space, and they should be aware of this fact andendeavor to broaden their spaces physically and mentally. Through studying thisnovel, the writer of the thesis hopes that this thesis can draw the attention of thedomestic scholars on the spatial theory as well as this novel.