前言：這其實是文學與性別研究的作業，哈哈，我就順便拿來更新了！
Virginia, Laura, and Clarissa are three unhappy women from different times but share the same problem. They all have loving families and people who love and care about them, but love does not lead them to the path of happiness. Virginia is too sensitive and shrewd, and she has a keen perception on things around her so that she observes everything. She keeps writing a book Mrs. Dalloway and tries to sort out her thoughts in it. But still, she can’t figure out the value of life and happiness, and that keeps her in a constant trepidation. Sometimes, being too clever is just not as good as we might think. Time goes by in every second, and a life without “truth” makes her exhausted and anxious. Moreover, people around her don’t understand what she’s thinking, which is the same problem Laura also has. For Virginia and Laura, their delicate minds are afflicted by misunderstanding and lack of understanding.
Why can’t women live as they wish? Women have their own desire and the very freedom they look for, but they have to worry about other people so that there are too many things that can only be secrets. Laura can’t stop wondering the value of being an attentive housewife who leads a dull life in a suburban area. She tends to her family and she has a beloved husband. When she reads the book Mrs. Dalloway, she realizes that she is not happy in the slightest. After giving her all to the family, her husband doesn’t understand her at all, and her son Richard only knows that she is unhappy. She is like the hostess in the book, making a cake and preparing for the party but gets nothing in the end. Laura is a pathetic woman, living in the world that nobody knows her vexation. She is trapped in an unbreakable bond, aka marriage, in which her whole life is already planned by others. No matter how lost these women are, they still have to face the hours. They are merely surviving as time is ticking away. Is death the only way to free women from these meaningless moments?
Clarissa seems to be sturdier than the other women in this film, but it’s also conspicuous that she is just too afraid to lose people she loves. She manages to take everything in her control and make her ex-boyfriend Richard be happier. Things just don’t go as smoothly as she expects despite all the efforts. Happiness does not lie in contrived scenarios. However, Clarissa always believes that it will be discovered in the foreseeable future. Richard, on the other hand, lives a self-contempt life, which Clarissa doesn’t really know about or never takes seriously. She is exactly the same as Mrs. Dalloway, endeavoring in trivial things to make everyone happy and beat the odds, but ends up with neither. Alas, Clarissa still lost what she cherishes the most in the end. These three women never figure out the true happiness in their lives, whereas the way Richard ends up his self-deprecating torture is ironically a “good relief.” With so many efforts paid, lives don’t seem to be better off, and endless vexation takes most of the time. Ultimately, the most haunting thing is that they have to live in every minute when they are not happy.
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