Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

In A Theory of Adaptation (2006), Linda Hutcheon suggests that “(s)tories … get retold in different ways in new material and cultural environments; like genes, they adapt to those new environments by virtue of mutation” (32). Taking this comment as a starting point, I examine a cluster of texts connected to Virginia Woolf’s experimental novel Mrs Dalloway: a “faithful” 1997 British film adaptation of the same name, American writer Michael Cunningham’s book The Hours (1998), and its 2002 film adaptation. Not strictly adaptations of Mrs Dalloway in terms of fidelity to the original plot or characters, I contend that both book and film versions of The Hours constitute worthy adaptations of Mrs Dalloway, superior in many ways to the 1997 Mrs Dalloway film. More specifically, with its painstaking translation of Woolf’s stream of consciousness technique into filmic techniques such as voice-over and flashback, the 1997 film is strikingly creaky and awkward, and entirely lacking in the energy and innovation of Woolf’s novel. The Hours, by contrast, interprets and reworks the story for a contemporary audience, making direct commentary on the cultural situatedness of Woolf’s novel and re-invigorating its deeper themes. In this way, while inventing stories that on the surface have little to do with the original novel, it echoes the experimental spirit of Mrs Dalloway by creating an overt intertext with it.