Analysis Of The Female Anxiety In The Hours Of Michael Cunningham From Postmodern Feminism

The Hours is the most famous work of Michael Cunningham.It has won many literature prizes,including The Pulitzer Prize and International PEN/Faulkner Award.In this novel,with the work Mrs.Dalloway written by Virginia Woolf as clue,one day three females in different times spent was described,respectively.The psychological barrier and mental anxiety of the characters in the novel are also suffered by modern people.Michael Cunningham used unique narrative structure and stream-of-consciousness technique to describe the mental crisis of three females in the twentieth century.Thus,the mental anxiety generally suffered by people in post-industrial era was discussed.Critics and scholars have tried to expound this novel from different perspectives,such as feminism and gender study.However,the anxiety state of modern people reflected in this novel is still needed to be studied.In The Hours,the post-modern female characters had similar symptoms of anxiety.However,after thoroughly exploring the experience of anxiety of each people,it was found that the reasons for their anxiety were different.As an enduring topic,psychological anxiety is a lifelong process for everyone.The study on this novel from the perspective of anxiety is also a review of the spiritual state of human beings.The thesis is mainly composed of five sections.Besides the introduction and conclusion,there are three chapters.Chapter One presents the outward expression of anxiety of the postmodern female characters in The Hours,including frustration,escaping consciousness,and the pervasive sense of death.Chapter Two analyzes the reasons for anxiety of the female characters on the postmodern perspective: for Virginia Woolf,the reasons are mainly due to the violence from men,the disease and the war;for Laura Brown,the reasons are from family ties and post-war disorder;and the anxiety for Clarissa Vaughan is the result of emotional trauma.Following this,Chapter Three demonstrates how the three female characters handle their anxiety in different ways: Virginia Woolf commits suicide,Laura Brown chooses to run away,while Clarissa Vaughan decides to return to face everything.The thesis aims not only to provide a new realm in the research of The Hours,but also to explore a right way to handle anxiety for women.