Mrs. Dalloway vs The Hours

Because we're currently watching The Hours in class, I thought it would be appropriate to write a comparison between the movie and the book even though we haven't finished watching the movie yet. There are the obvious similarities. The modern day Clarissa and her friends have many characteristics, which I'm sure that they were intended to, that are similar to the characters in Mrs. Dalloway. In both the book and the movie, Clarissa is introduced saying that she will go buy the flowers herself. Both Clarissas seem to be high class ladies with taste. It also should be noted that both the movie and the book take place in a day, although in the movie we see three different scenes from different time periods.

The one that I want to focus on first is the storyline with the modern day Clarissa who lives in New York. She very much channels the aura of the Clarissa in the book. New York Clarissa seems to be very confident on the outside. She mentions to Louis how she has been taking care of Richard for many years and she is very adept at planning parties. This seems identical to the Clarissa Dalloway in the book who is also confident and very social. However, both Clarissas also exhibit a weak side, one that they try hard to keep it to themselves. New York Clarissa tries really hard to keep it together when she's taking care or Richard while Clarissa Dalloway has her own moments when she is afraid of what will happen in the future.
What was strange and confusing to me was the portrayal of Richard. In the book, Richard is shown to be a healthy politician who seems both physically and mentally strong. In the movie, Richard is sickly and a writer (poet?) who doesn't seem similar at all compared to the Richard in the book. In fact, I thought he seemed so much more like Septimus, who we knew was suffering from PTSD and once was considering to become a poet (wrote poetry at least). Seeing Richard in the movie gave me a sense of what it would be like if the Clarissa in the book knew Septimus intimately and provided a different view of Clarissa.
Louis seems to be most like Peter. He seems to be very laid-back and does things on a whim. He even falls in love with a person who he probably shouldn't be thinking about having a relationship with. What was interesting was that Louis was once in a relationship with Richard (at least that's what I picked up). This is radically different from what happened in the book. Richard was fine with Peter but Peter didn't seem to like Richard that much. To put Richard and Peter in a relationship is something that I couldn't see.
In the other storylines, there weren't as many connections that I could make to the book. I think the biggest similarity that I saw was that both Virginia and the other lady (I forgot her name) seemed to be conflicted with life and death. This is really similar to Mrs. Dalloway as both Clarissa and Septimus ponder about the meaning of life. In Virginia's case, I could see why her thoughts at the time lead her to write Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa Dalloway seems to have aspects of Virginia Woolf that I could see better through watching the movie. Both Clarissa and Virginia are wealthy people who hide most of their feelings on the inside. Septimus also seems to be influenced by Virginia Woolf. I can see why Virginia Woolf portrayed the doctors as the "villains" in the book because Virginia Woolf herself dislikes the way the doctors treat her. I'd like to hear what everyone else has to say about the similarities between the two.

Why is Septimus here?

At first, I wasn't sure why Septimus was in the book. He seemed like an out of place guy who didn't fit into the upper class society that Clarissa and the book seemed to be oriented around. In the passage where we first meet Septimus, his reaction is so radically different from everyone else's when the car backfires that it's really quite shocking to read. After reading the whole book, Septimus's character just seemed more and more interesting and I really wanted to find out why Virginia Woolf wanted to add in Septimus.
I'll admit that I was disappointed when I scanned through; I didn't find anything that really stood out. When comparing Septimus to other characters in the book, he seems, at first glance, to be opposite of Clarissa's. Especially after the panel presentations, I saw in rather vivid detail how contrasting Septimus and Clarissa actually were. I decided to make a thorough comparison of both Clarissa and Septimus and see how similar they actually are and also perhaps realize why Septimus was placed into the book. For one, Septimus is submerged in his own world, distrusting of everyone. Whereas Clarissa seems to be an outstanding citizens, throwing parties for her husband and is able to go out without freaking out to events that happen around her.
However, we know that there must be more to both characters. In class, it was mentioned that in the original version of Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa was meant to commit suicide. This seems very similar to Septimus. In fact, even though Clarissa didn't commit suicide, they still have a lot in common. Throughout the book, Clarissa is constantly reminiscing about her life, although in private. She feels as if she has aged and at the end, she identifies herself with Septimus.
In fact, there is more to be identified about the similarities between Septimus and Clarissa. It is rather obvious that Clarissa is extremely conscious about the judgement of others and the way the world perceives her. She feels that the only time she can be herself is when she is alone and she frets about her looks, how she is aging. Septimus, despite being in a different world, is also conscious of the way others look at him. In a particularly memorable passage where the car backfires, he worries that he is in the way of others as everyone seemed to stare at him. This seems different than the initial view that we get of Septimus, who seems off in his own world, paranoid and not truly understanding what is occurring around him when in fact he is worried about other people's opinion of him, though he might know that they are judging him because he's acting so strangely.
There are also a large amount of differences between Clarissa and Septimus. Clarissa seems to be surrounded by life; she throws parties, she enjoys flowers, she seems like a typical citizen. Septimus has a very different take on life. He sees everyone as wearing masks and hiding their true selves and ultimately, he committed suicide because it seemed like he didn't want to continue to interact with those people, in particular Bradshaw and Holmes. However, Clarissa might not be as ordinary as she first appears. We know that she has been thinking about life and death throughout the book and at the end, she remembers incidents from her past in that dark room that she feels was the moment that she could die and be completely happy (this is the time at Bourton where she was with Sally and Peter).
I think that Virginia Woolf introduced Septimus into the novel because she wanted to use him to further explore the depths of Clarissa's character. By providing a completely different character in her novel, she managed to show us parts of Clarissa that we wouldn't have picked up otherwise. This goes back to her belief that characters are the devices that drive the story and not the plot.

Drugs?

I know this is kind of late to be posting about the Mezzanine, but the thought just occurred to me as I was thinking about what to post on this newfangled blog of mine. Anyways, when I first picked up the Mezzanine and began to read it, I was always puzzled by the question of how could Nicholson Baker get so in depth about things that seem so meaningless. By coincidence, my tutor had also mentioned the experiences that he had from his (one-time) usage of drugs, LSD (unless if you count marijuana brownies as drugs, in which case it would be two). One point that I remember he mentioned was why drug users continue to say phrases like "wow" or "oh my god" or just open and close their mouth like a fish. Apparently, everything becomes equally interesting. Our minds desensitizes some irrelevant information like the details in the trees and the shape of the flowers because if we focus on all of the little details, then it would prove to be very detrimental for humans in nature. My tutor said that when he took LSD, it made everything seem equally important and he wasn't able to describe in words what he was seeing.

His description of LSD made me think back to the Mezzanine, and the intricate detail that Nicholson Baker put into the book. Apparently the 80's were a time of drug use panic. In the years before, drug use was popular and relatively more tolerated than today, though not necessarily encouraged. People took LSD and cocaine to get "high" or a sense of euphoria and some even reported to be able to see things that they normally wouldn't be able to and how taking drugs had changed their perspective on the world completely. In the 80's, drug usage had grown to a very large scale, mostly the usage of cocaine which is cheap and extremely addictive, and people were beginning to crack down on the rampant usage of drugs. Public awareness of the harmful side effects of drugs were gradually increasing and politicians were declaring a "war on drugs." I thought it was very interesting that Nicholson Baker published his Mezzanine during this time period when drug usage was so frowned upon. I'm not saying that Nicholson Baker wrote the book with the intention of supporting drugs, but I can't help but wonder why there seems to be a connection between the theme of the book and the effects of drug usage. In both cases, the "main character," Howie or the drug user, finds great interest in mundane stuff that normally people wouldn't pay attention to. This however might be too much of a stretch as it is true that Nicholson Baker wrote the Mezzanine with the intention of letting the readers see into the stream of consciousness within a human mind. I'd like to know what everyone else thinks; am I reading too much into it or perhaps Nicholson Baker did write the Mezzanine fully understanding the environment around him.