The Ultimate The Hours Quiz | Authors

Answer: The Carrouthers Prize

Virginia Woolf departs from her house having written two letters-- one to her husband, Leonard, and one to her sister, Vanessa-- and she heads along the soft trail to the river. Here, she picks up a large rock and places it into her jacket pocket. She decides to follow through with her plan, takes one last look around her, and lets the current of the river pull her under. Her husband finds the letter too late to stop her; Virginia is taken by the current to a nearby bridge where her body pushes against one of the supports and feels the energy from those overtop.

At the end of the twentieth century, Clarissa Vaughan runs errands in New York City. Richard, a man she's loved for years, refers to her as Mrs. Dalloway, a literary nickname bestowed upon her many years earlier, as she departs on a beautiful day. Clarissa plans for a party hosted at her place; she expects food, flowers, and witty guests before Richard is given the Carrouthers Prize in honour of his poetic works. She runs into a writer on the way and while she knows Richard wouldn't want him invited she feels it's only right to do so for manners' sake. She regrets not being able to have the argument she would have over this invitation if Richard were a younger, healthier man. Nowadays it just seems as though he turns the topic to Sally, her partner, and his being afflicted with AIDS depreciates his mind. Clarissa visits a bookstore and then heads to the florist's where she imagines herself as though she were from a century ago, picking flowers from a garden.

Answer: Richie

In London in 1923, Virginia Woolf dreams about beginning her next novel and she considers that her protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway, should be shopping for flowers. She awakens and forgets this but feels that she's ready to begin writing. Before commencing her craft, she steps downstairs early in the morning to find Leonard working on his proofs. Both discuss breakfast but she doesn't want food to interfere with her feeling at the moment. Instead she heads to her study, opens the window, and begins to write: "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself."

In Los Angeles in 1949, Laura Brown reads this line in a copy of Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" in bed. She fights the urge to continue reading, instead getting up to cook for her husband, Dan (as it's his birthday). Unfortunately, he and their son, Richie, are awake and she finds them downstairs already in the kitchen; she excuses her own tardiness and unwillingness to leave the bed on her pregnancy and her husband is perfectly fine with this. After he leaves for work, she vows to make him a birthday cake, buy flowers for the table, and gather some presents.

Answer: Pride

Clarissa leaves the florist's with her bouquet in hand and stops in front of the movie studio trailers down the block to see if she can get a close glimpse of a celebrity. When she leaves, her mind turns to events that happened between herself and Richard many years ago, right on the very same corner.

She heads to Richard's apartment to check in on him. Taking the stairs to his apartment, she finds him inside on a chair and goes over the day's plans, particularly those involving the party. Richard is confused, however, and he constantly mixes up the past and the future due to his disease. Clarissa assures him that all will be well; he can choose to do whatever he wants during the party and they're all there to support him.

When she prepares to depart, Richard starts talking about how his pride ruined him and that his disease is the result.

He starts to talk about how he should have written about the two of them and how their lives should have been different and together. Clarissa calms him down by suggesting he take a nap.

She heads home to put the flowers in water and promises to return to pick him up for the party.

Answer: Nelly

Virginia Woolf feels that Mrs. Dalloway will die by the end of her book; she wants this book to be perfect and it will follow a day in Clarissa Dalloway's life, but she will take her own life in the finale. Virginia wants to write more to be productive but she fears that her headaches, times of extreme pain and hallucinations will return if she falters and overdoes it, so she steps back. She heads downstairs and Leonard is still frustrated with the amount of errors in his prints.

Laura Brown starts making her husband's birthday cake with her son's assistance. Since he's three years old, this is the first time she's allowed him to help out in the kitchen. When the two of them share in measuring duties and bond over their experience, she feels as though she can accomplish anything; she loves her husband and son and she can get through this second pregnancy.

Virginia decides that Clarissa will have already met her first love, a young girl from her youth, prior to the events of the novel, but that girl will have committed a tragic suicide. Walking through the town of Richmond thinking (aloud) about her book, she realizes how much she despises being away from London. When she returns home, Virginia speaks with her servant, Nelly, about lunch and afternoon tea (during which Vanessa Bell will be arriving) and asks her to head to London on a very short amount of time to receive proper tea and food. Virginia decides that Mrs. Dalloway will have a much better way with her own servants as she feels she is lacking in her manners with her own.

Answer: True

Clarissa runs into Sally, her partner and roommate, on her way into her building and heads into her apartment to put the flowers in water. For some reason she feels dislocated in her own kitchen as it simply feels as though it's not hers. This feeling passes but it is replaced with a sense of temporality. She feels as though she is no longer in a position she was years ago; her relevance is simply waning-- but that's untrue. She recalls the summer she and Richard and Louis spent at an opportune cabin together and how she and Richard progressed to the point in their relationship that they did and how he would be the closest she ever got to a true marriage. But it wasn't meant to be.

Laura Brown's cake doesn't turn out to be as 'professional' as she had hoped but it does have its personal charms. She thinks about the presents she wants to wrap for her husband and the chores she plans to do for the day and she wonders why her husband is so happy with the life he lives. She simply wants to be a happy wife and mother and not a strange person. Her friend, Kitty, who is younger than she is but still spends time due to her husband's past status, arrives and calls the cake 'cute', an adjective that Laura doesn't like; she wanted the cake to be 'beautiful'. The two of them talk until Kitty mentions that she has a growth in her uterus and the doctors will be diagnosing her in the hospital the following day. Laura assures her that everything will be alright and the two of them share an out-of-character kiss before Kitty departs. Laura returns to her own world, free from the complications typical of a Woolf novel, and tosses her cake in the trash to start anew.

Answer: San Francisco

Virginia's sister, Vanessa, arrives at the Woolf household quite early with her three children, Julian, Quentin, and Angelica. As the two sisters head outside to the garden to meet with the children, they discover that the three have found a dying bird and wish to bury it properly and comfortably. The family gathers materials for a dying bed and Virginia thinks about the bird's circumstances. She wishes she could be the one laying down, dying in a bed of roses. Everyone heads in for tea.

Clarissa continues to plan her party until Louis, Richard's old partner, arrives unexpectedly. The two of them discuss their past five years out of touch as well as Richard's newest book (in which the main character, Clarissa, unexpectedly kills herself after several hundred pages). Clarissa brings up the morbid topic of where she wants her ashes spread when she dies (a dune in Wellfleet). Before Louis leaves, Clarissa's daughter, Julia, arrives.

Answer: A hotel

Laura Brown drives her car through the hills of Pasadena to get away from what bothers her. She set her child up with a babysitter for a few hours before the party, prepared the food (including a second cake) and brought her copy of "Mrs. Dalloway" along. She feels as though she's going mad; the kiss still lingers in her mind and the cake still makes her uneasy due to its homemade imperfections. She takes out a room in a downtown hotel in which she can have the privacy she needs to read her book in peace. While in her room, she questions mortality and thinks about Virginia Woolf's suicide. While Laura loves life, she believes it would be quite easy to jump into the river.

Virginia feels that perhaps Clarissa shouldn't die by her own hand considering the pleasures of the world. Nelly returns with the tea from London and Virginia kisses her sister, Vanessa.

Clarissa and her daughter speak for a few moments before she's reintroduced to Mary Krull, Julia's friend, who seems to be a bad egg. While it's clear that Mary wants to be with Julia, Julia would never want to be with her the same way. The two of them are invited to the party at five.

Answer: London

Virginia heads out into the night and comes upon the dead thrush on her walk. She decides to continue past this memento of death to the train station where she will catch a half-hour train to London, if only to feel freer. She misses her train and decides to wait for the next one however she grows impatient and takes a stroll around the block. Leonard finds her first and expresses his worry upon finding she was missing. She decides to head back home with him, but she alludes to her desire to return to the city.

Clarissa's partner, Sally, sits in on a meeting with famous, gay actor Oliver St. Ives and screenwriter Walter Hardy as they plan an action movie in which Oliver plays a homosexual action hero. Following this uneventful meeting, Sally heads home to prepare for the party, and she picks up a bouquet of roses for Clarissa. Upon her return, the two of them are instantly happy in each other's company and grateful for the years they've been together.

Answer: False

Laura returns to Mrs. Latch's house an hour late to pick up Little Richie and she emerges from her other realm, a realm of deceit and wrongness. She finds that her son is more than happy to see her and they quickly head home to start dinner before Dan arrives for his birthday. On the drive home, Richie tells Laura that he loves her and she can see that he's gained newfound maturity. Perhaps it was from witnessing the kiss between herself and Kitty; perhaps it was from his seeing her make the second cake; perhaps it was from knowing that she went off to read; regardless, she is unsettled by this change.

Clarissa arrives to pick Richard up for the party and finds that he has taken the wrong pills and he's preparing to sit in a window ledge. She pleads with him to come back inside and he mumbles on about her talking to his lonely mother. He says that he can't make it to the party and that it's been too long since he's been well. He says he loves her and slides out the window to his death. Clarissa, in shock, rushes to the ground floor to his body and finds that no one else heard the accident. She is alone as she waits for help.

Answer: Toronto

Dan returns home and blows out the candles on his cake; Laura can't help but feel trapped in her domestic role and finds herself enraged. When she places down the cutlery however, she begins to think that everything may be alright. She reads the scene like a book and begins to look optimistically towards the future, towards her next child, and towards the possibility of Kitty being healthy.

For Virginia, it's been decided that they shall return to London. As the time comes to go to bed, she ponders her book and decides that Clarissa will not die. Thinking of her own kiss with her sister, she believes that Clarissa Dalloway will have her own kiss with a woman which will linger in her mind. She will survive in the city, loving what life has to offer. Instead, a visionary and a poet will die in her place.

Laura prepares to head to bed with Dan and she opens the medicine cabinet to find a bottle of sleeping pills. She realizes how easy it would be to locate a motel room and commit the most perverse acts she could whether they be reading or suicide. She heads off to sleep with her husband.

Clarissa returns to her apartment with Richard's mother, Laura Brown, who has become a retired librarian living in Toronto. After attempting suicide, she left her family and fled to Canada to live out her days; she was immortalized (along with Clarissa) in his writing. The two of them eulogize Richard together and Clarissa realizes the true power of the hours. While Richard faced off against hour after painful hour, everyone else felt the same passing of time, and they continue to do so, whether they're closer to the end or further from it. Everyone who's not yet passed on is on their way and it's only a matter of time.