Integration of Life and Death in Mrs. Dalloway and The...

Integration of Life and Death in Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours show that life and death are dependent on each other. It is a persons life experiences that define their thoughts and feelings on death and death can define their life experiences. Cunningham, the author of The Hours, explains it best: We live our lives, do whatever we do and then we sleep - its as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if were very fortunate, by time itself. Theres just this for consolation: and hour here or there when our lives seem against†¦show more content†¦It is not until Richards death that Laura begins to regret her decision of abandonment. Clarissa Dalloway is a women living in the time when a womens primary role was that of a housewife. Clarissa spent her days reading memoirs and trying to get her servants to like her. Her life was restricted to a very set routine. Even her marriage was routine and void of passion. She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible, unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa and more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway (Woolf 11). Although her life was a set routine, Clarissa embraced her role of mother and housewife because she feared life and the thought of dying. Her fear for life is illustrated when she repeats the line of Shakespears Cymbeline while she walks to buy flowers. Clarissas fear of dying stems from her living through the death of her mother, father and sister. She has the notion that everyday is dangerous and she was going through it alone. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day (Woolf 8). Clarissa realizes that life is not worth living unless you are passionate