The Hours Explication

Katie Lopes-Raftery
Ms. Clapp
AP Literature and Composition
28 January 2008
Free From Obligation

“Laura leads her son back into the living room, reintroduces him to his tower of colored wooden blocks. Once he is settled, she returns to the kitchen and, without hesitation, picks up the cake and tips it from its milk-glass platter into the garbage can. It lands with a surprisingly solid sound; a yellow rose is smeared along the can’s curved side. She immediately feels relieved, as if steel cords have been loosened from around her chest. She can start over now. According to the clock on the wall, it is barely ten-thirty. She has plenty of time to make another cake. This time, she will prevent crumbs from getting caught in the icing. This time, she will trace the letters with a toothpick, so they’ll be centered, and she’ll leave the roses for last.” (112).

In this passage from The Hours by Michael Cunningham, the typical 1950’s housewife, Laura Brown, has faced a critique of her cake as being “cute” and decides to, without any hesitation, throw her cake away. Cunningham demonstrated Laura Brown’s “trapped” nature in order to develop a bigger theme in the book: that often times in life, one must go against what is socially accepted and expected to be content, fulfilling one’s personal desires.
Although Laura dearly loves her family, she feels restricted by the things she must do for them. Before being able to fulfill her own desire of throwing out the cake, Laura “leads her son back into the living room, reintroduces him to his tower of colored wooden blocks.” She feels an obligation to have him “settled.” It is only after she takes care of her housewife and motherly duty that she can go back and take care of her own emotions.
Laura’s throwing away of the cake symbolizes the freedom she wishes she had. “Without hesitation,” she throws the cake in the trash can, making a “solid sound.” Immediately, Laura “feels relieved as if steel cords have been loosened from around her chest.” This simile suggests that Laura feels so restrained by society’s expectations that Cunningham compared her relief of throwing away the cake to the relief of releasing steel cords from one’s chest. Although Laura is reluctant to leave her family, symbolically speaking, through the cake, “she can start over now.” Going on with the idea of one single day representing a life, Cunningham mentions that “according to the clock on the wall, it is barely ten-thirty.” Symbolically speaking, this means that it is pretty early in Laura’s life that she could still change it to do as she pleases. The next sentence foreshadows what she will eventually do with her life, make another cake. This time around, “she will prevent crumbs from getting caught in the icing,” or prevent anything from making her life less “pretty.” Cunningham’s use of “this time” along with the verbs in the future tense (she will leave) show that Laura is making a decision to change her life, hoping that by tracing the letters with a toothpick, “they’ll be centered.”
This passage is the “day” that explains the “lifetime” of the book. All three protagonists, Laura Brown, Clarissa Vaughn, and Virginia Woolf, struggle with their sense of constraint due to the expectations of their time. Laura was the one who most noticeably struggled with it, and eventually decides to go against what she felt socially obligated to do and completely left her family (which we find out at the end of the novel). Like the cake, Laura throws away her “planned out” life in order to live an uncharted path, which she could not fulfill by being a typical housewife.