The film represents the ability for one's life to live one through one's ideas, how the effect of an idea can change the course of history. This theme is seen in The Hours as Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway is used to structure the drama in the film across three different time periods: Woolf's from the 1920s-1941, Laura Brown's in the 1950s to present day, and Clarissa Vaughn's in the present day. Each character represents a seed planted, maturing and finally springing forth.
Virginia Woolf's original idea for her novel was to have her protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway kill herself at her party, but she decided to do away with this idea and have the soldier be the victim of suicide. Laura then represents the woman Mrs. Dalloway's desire to live no more, but instead leaves her family without notice. Thus the seedling for death gets passed on to Richard, her son who desired to be loved from early on and never found it in the world, nor was able to release the torment of not having it in his poetry. Mrs. Dalloway considers the soldier's suicide to be admirable in Woolf's novel. But, the film reveals the far reaching effects of such an "admirable" act. While the individual may be seeking the freedom of pain, there are those they leave behind to deal with the pieces of their choice.
Clarissa, Laura, even Louis and Clarissa's daughter must deal with the horror. Laura's horror is that she abandoned her child, leaving him with an emptiness only she as a mother could have filled. Clarissa was left to watch a man she loved end his life before her very eyes. A piece of her is gone that can never return. Thus, the psychological gesture of holding the womb by characters in the film is representative of the deep loss that is occurring within them. There is an instinct that something is being lost, a knowing that whatever it is that has fractured inside of them can either be healed or allowed to fester with the hours that pass -- the hours of life that one can choose to live or die based on the experiences of one's life.
