How Does Cunningham Use Depression In The Hours

In The Hours, by Michael Cunningham, the different behavioral and suggestive manifestations of depression are found mainly in the personal biography and setting of the characters. In Richmond 1923, Virginia Woolf lives in an old house, out skirted from the city. Mrs. Laura Brown lives in the suburbs of Los Angeles, in a house with a loving husband and innocent son. Clarissa Vaughn is set in in modern- day New York City, with busy streets and noisy people. Richard, on the other hand, grew from a young, observant, and analytical child only to be living through a devastating epidemic. Throughout his novel, Cunningham makes it a point, in each character’s story, to introduce a time where they could have ended their lives and be freed from their sorrow and misery. These characterizations illustrate the different degrees and possibilities of depression and suicide in The Hours.
In the novel, Virginia Woolf shows evident traces of psychotic depression through hearing hallucinations, memory loss, and lack of appetite, and in turn lives under her own threat.
“I went to look for you, and you weren’t there. I thought something’s happened. I don’t know why…I was so worried. I don’t know why.” (Cunningham, 171) Family members, such as her husband Leonard, made all the necessary efforts to be able to motivate and encourage Virginia with functions and objects that used to be pleasant, such as writing. The suffering takes place through the intense and constant identifications such as arising feelings of anger and guilt by the depressed. Although the thought of losing her was heartbreaking to many of those that were close to her, taking her life might have the best possible solution for Virginia