When One Story Ends, Another Quickly Begins

She is borne quickly along by the current. She appears to be flying, a fantastic figure, arms outstretched, hair streaming, the tail of the fur coat billowing behind. She floats, heavily, through shafts of brown, granular light. She does not travel far. Her feet (the shoes are gone) strike the bottom occasionally, and when they do they summon up a sluggish cloud of muck, filled with the black silhouettes of leaf skeletons, that stands all but stationary in the water after she has passed along out of sight. Stripes of green-black weed catch in her hair and the fur of her coat, and for a while her eyes are blindfolded by a thick swatch of weed, which finally loosens itself and floats, twisting and untwisting and twisting again. She comes to rest, eventually, against one of the pilings of the bridge at Southease. The current presses her, worries her, but she is firmly positioned at the base of the squat, square column, with her back to the river and her face against the stone. She curls there with one arm folded against her chest and the other afloat over the rise of her hip. Some distance above her is the bright, rippled surface. The sky reflects unsteadily there, white and heavy with clouds, traversed by the black cutout shapes of rooks. Cars and trucks rumble over the bridge. A small boy, no older than three, crossing the bridge with his mother, stops at the rail, crouches, and pushes the stick he's been carrying between the slats of the railing so it will fall into the water. His mother urges him along but he insists on staying awhile, watching the stick as the current takes it.

In this passage from The Hours by Michael Cunningham, he suggests that suicide is the most obvious, easy, and almost beautiful form of escape from pain. By using beatific word choice, symbolism, and imagery, Cunningham makes Woolf’s suicide a glorious means of escape that depicts the subtle beauty in death.
After Woolf submerges herself into a river, Cunningham describes her angelically. She is “flying, a fantastic figure, arms outstretched, hair streaming, the tail of her fur coat billowing behind.” She is not a mortal anymore, and after her “shoes are gone” she has officially disassociated with her former world. When her feet strike the bottom, they “summon up…black silhouettes of leaf skeletons”. By using the word “summon” he insinuates she is magical, or surreal. The leaf skeletons are clear symbols of death. When she is “blindfolded by a thick swatch of weed” she does nothing to remove it; it goes away itself, which also displays her fearlessness of the unknown, death.
Cunningham respects Woolf deeply as a writer, and this is evident since this novel was inspired by Mrs. Dalloway. He believed that she was a genius, and incredibly virtuous. When Virginia “comes to rest… against one of the pilings of the bridge”, this is where her life has ended. Cunningham mentions the “bright, rippled surface” above her. This is the centuries after her death, the glorification of her work as an artist. The fact that she is in a river is also symbolic, since rivers are often representative of time. When up against the piling of the bridge, she has stopped existing; the river of time no longer carries her on. The author also mentions “the black cutout shapes of rooks” flying overhead. Rooks are a prominent symbol of death, and they were once known to bring the souls of the virtuous to heaven. This escape that Virginia makes is something that was meant to be, and it is evident that the author believes that she was not meant for this earth. She is ethereal and angelic, a work of art herself, and through this portrayal of the day of her death, Cunningham makes it so.
In this scene of death, a young boy enters. He is brand new, and he hasn’t experienced life. He “crouches, and pushes the stick he’s been carrying…so it will fall into the water.” This is comparable to the party scene in Mrs. Dalloway when Clarissa Dalloway hears about the suicide of Septimus Smith. There, at the party, amidst reveling and happiness, death appears. In this situation, the child is amusing himself with this small gesture— unaware of the fact that death is right below him. As the oy sits “watching the stick as the current takes it”, the young boy is beginning his journey in life. Right where Virginia’s time ran out, this boy has just started his in the river of time.
Virginia Woolf’s suicide was a terrifying beauty to Cunningham, and his depiction of that day reflects this. By his symbolism, imagery, and word choice, the author transforms the typical reactions to suicide, and illustrates death as a literally breath-taking way to die.