Go Buy Those Flowers

         “Mrs. Dalloway said she would but the flowers herself” (Woolf 1). It is such an ordinary sentence. It would usually be placed in the middle of the novel. Only a true literary rebel, *Cough cough* Virginia Woolf *cough cough*, would dare to use it as the first sentence to an extraordinary book. But of course, there is a purpose. A purpose I didn’t really understand until I saw the movie The Hours ¹ . The movie dealt with the idea of the struggles of an ordinary life but also the beauty. The act of buying flowers is such a trivial domestic task. It is tasks like these that make up Mrs. Dalloway’s and Clarissa Vaughn’s entire existence. Clarissa Vaughn is representative of Mrs. Dalloway because she thrives on ordinary, but lively, events. The beauty in flowers represents the beauty of daily tasks. Clarissa Vaughn’s desire to throw a party to celebrate Richards’s accomplishment is a beautiful but trivial life event Clarissa is used to.  Laura, on the other hand, sees no value in trivial life. Even though she has a wonderful and kind son, she see the act of being his mother as confining. Her daily tasks trap her. She is also unable to complete the tasks well. She can’t even bake a simple cake. The confinement of these ordinary tasks and her inability to execute them prompts her to leave her trivial life. The movie really shows how some people are happy to conform, while others are not willing to. I now understand why Woolf choose her first sentence to be what it is. Mrs. Dalloway focuses on the regular tasks life brings. Sometimes the tasks aren’t so amazing, but sometimes the tasks are like flowers. Vibrant with the colors of life.

¹I don’t know the correct form to cite a movie.