The Hours
What clocks measure
The Hours is a 1925 novel by Virginia Woolf, published under its final title Mrs Dalloway, which follows a day in the life of a London society woman.
The working title was revived for Michael Cunningham's 1998 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel interweaving three women's stories across different eras, and for the 2002 film adaptation starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, and Julianne Moore.
The phrase evokes the passage of time through ordinary moments—hours as units of lived experience rather than mere clock divisions.
- timeMeasured passage of moments
- tick tockAlternating clock sounds
- clockDevice displaying time
- minutesSixty-second intervals
- momentsShort spans of time
Virginia Woolf · Mrs Dalloway · passing · ticking · novel · film · Meryl Streep · Nicole Kidman · Julianne Moore · parallel lives · melancholy · suicide · flowers · party · depression · mental illness · daylight · mortality
- 90s BooksHarry Potter, Fight Club, Jurassic Park, The English Patient, Bridget Jones
- Mental Health MediaA Beautiful Mind, Girl Interrupted, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Good Will Hunting, Shine
- Psychological FictionCrime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, Mrs Dalloway, The Bell Jar, Dostoevsky
- women's writingVirginia Woolf, Jane Austen, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath
- Miramax FilmsPulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, Shakespeare in Love, The English Patient, Kill Bill
The Hourstimelessness
Freedom from temporal decay
eternity · oblivion · flow state · the moment
The HoursWar and Peace
Opposing states of nations
One Hundred Years of Solitude · Roots · Gone with the Wind · Lonesome Dove · The Lord of the Rings