Last night we watched The Hours, somehow I missed it first time around when Nicole Kidman won an Oscar for her portryal of Virginia Woolf. ‘What did you think?’ John asked when it finished. It was impossible to say, impossible then to put my thoughts into words.
I was transfixed not by Woolf’s story but by Laura Brown’s – played by Julianne Moore – a 1950’s housewife in Los Angeles whose husband is oblivious to her emotional unravelling – and the child in the corner, her young son, who realises so much more and experiences the threat of disintegration and her abandonment.
In the film Laura Brown books into a hotel intending to commit suicide but, unlike my own mother, she draws back from the attempt. I was eight, maybe nine when my mother attempted suicide (she was not successful.) The event swims far back in my mind, occassionally surfacing like a half-blind sea creature from the deep and murky waters of the past. Was I the one who found her? Probably – that’s what I’ve been told. Probably didn’t feel quite good enough an answer for someone trying to make sense of that darkened room, the bottle of tablets, the awful distress…but it was all I got or am ever likely to get now. Probably it was me – it looks that way.
I don’t think about it or the aftermath so much now. Like all the difficult things in my life then and all the good things in my life since, it is a part of who I am and therefore a part of my writing. My writing is filled with loss – I know – and I have yet to write a mother who lives. All the mothers in my novels are either dead or absent.
Perhaps this is the year I will write ‘a Mother’ – maybe not – but I was already feeling it was time to surprise myself and write something life affirming and optimistic and now after last night I am even more convinced. Not that this will change the writer I am but it might just be fun.
Here is a picture of me, taken by David, my son, in my new coat – I bought it yesterday – a snip at £25 in the sales – I walked away from it, then thought – Oh what the hell it’s a fun coat and I know my daughter Katie would love it – what better excuse did I need to go back and buy it?
You look great in the coat Avril! I found your story very moving, and it reinforced my conviction that children are much more easily damaged by lies and half truths than by the truth. But we were brought up in an age that thought children unworthy of the truth.
The Hours always bothers me – I haven’t read the book, so don’t know if I’d find it more satisfactory than the film, which seemed to employ some ‘cheap realities’ to bring it off.
Thank you Kathleen! I think the film of The Hours bothers me too (like you I have not read the book) – and not for the reasons I mentioned in the post – I didn’t find it at all satisfying either. I thought it trivialised Virginia Woolf’s story, as you say employing ‘cheap realities,’ and oddly contrived connections
Hermione Lee’s biography of Woolf which I have been (and still am) reading is by contrast an extraordinary, meticulous and subtle portrait. Comparisons between the two mediums are of course inappropriate but I think it is impossible to read such a beautifully written biography or indeeed the novels of Virgina Woolf and then watch The Hours.
Avril x
Avril
A powerful and brave breakthrough post making all kinds of connections. The celebratory picture of you in THE COAT of the winter shows that though the child is in the woman, the woman defines present reality and can finally comfort the child in the corner.
wx
Wendy – thank you. I did wonder about whether to post this but I couldn’t not because I think you’re absolutely right it defines the present reality A x