Nicole Kidman's prosthetic nose isn't the only thing about the new film "The Hours" that seems false to Vara Neverow.
Neverow, an English professor at Southern Connecticut State University and president of the International Virginia Woolf Society, says the new Paramount film, based on Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, inaccurately portrays British writer Woolf, who died in 1941, as an invalid madwoman. "Feminist scholars have been fighting this image" of Woolf "for years," says Neverow, and Cunningham's portrayal-which Neverow finds a tiresome backslide into old, narrow stereotypes of Woolf-does a disservice to the legacy of the writer, who Neverow says was "politically aware and deafeningly feminist."
Woolf committed suicide at the age of 59, but the reason behind her action wasn't simply her mental instability, as is popularly believed. World War II was raging in Europe at the time. Woolf's husband, Leonard, was Jewish, and both Virginia and Leonard were outspoken socialists and intellectuals, and they had decided that if the Germans invaded their town they would kill themselves rather than be taken prisoner and sent to concentration camps. When her home began to be threatened by German fighter planes, Virginia "just couldn't keep it together," says Neverow. She didn't want Leonard to have to worry about taking care of her any longer, particularly under such conditions, so she filled her pockets with stones and walked into the river.
Woolf was one of the great writers of her time. Her best-known works are perhaps her novels, such as "To The Lighthouse," "The Waves," and "Mrs. Dalloway," the novel that influenced "The Hours." Woolf's use of language to capture emotion was unparalleled, but, says Neverow, "she can be difficult to read." Neverow is pleased that "The Hours" is bringing Woolf back into the public consciousness, to make her more than just the face on the Barnes & Noble shopping bags. "People are reading 'Mrs. Dalloway' now, and renting the film based on that novel. So that's an advantage of 'The Hours.'"
Another effect of the buildup to this film is that Neverow, a longtime scholar of Woolf's writings, has been in demand as never before as a source of information about the author: she has been interviewed about "The Hours" by such news organizations as Entertainment Weekly and the Associated Press.
"The Hours" tells the stories of three women in three different time periods. One of the characters is Woolf, another is a woman in the 1940s who is reading Woolf's novel "Mrs. Dalloway," and the third is a contemporary woman based on the character of Clarissa Dalloway in that novel. Neverow says it's not necessary to read "Mrs. Dalloway" to understand "The Hours," but that many admirers of the film will do so.
Although she was widely read in her own time, Woolf's popularity has waned over the years, and what has remained of her reputation has been her bouts with mental illness. "She fought this image throughout her career," says Neverow. "She didn't want to be perceived as an effete or an aesthetic has-been. Her feminist writings were controversial and got a lot of attention, but then there was a slide into the woman who had one nervous breakdown after another." There was so much more to Woolf than that, Neverow says.
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