1. Analysing the structure

2. General Aspects Title : The Hours Author : Michael Cunningham Type of work : Novel Date of first publication : 1998 Protagonist : three parallel protagonists: Virginia Woolf (in 1923), Clarissa Vaughn (in late 20 th century) and Laura Brown (in 1949). Plot : the novel deals with the ordinary day of the three protagonists. The stories run in parallel. Themes : time (memories and remorse), dissatisfaction of life, love and death.

3. The Prologue Virginia Woolf’s suicide. Introduction of the main theme of the novel: the dissatisfaction of life. Function: –to create the horizon of expectation –to make the reader see Virginia Woolf’s story from the perspective of her death.

4. Function of each chapter Mrs Dalloway : to introduce Clarissa’s relationships life, through her thought and her contact with people she sees. Mrs Woolf : to prepare the reader to understand V. Woolf’s madness. Mrs Brown : to introduce Laura’s dissatisfaction and entrapment of life. The three characters are connected through V. Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway.

5. Mrs Dalloway : to introduce Richard’s character, his illness and Clarissa’s nursing side. Mrs Woolf : to reveal the interior conflict between the productive writer and the terrified invalid. Mrs Brown : to emphasize her disagreement between her role as wife and mother that she tries to escape through the book and her desire to be completely free.

6. Mrs Woolf : to explain how writing influences positively Virginia’s life. Mrs Dalloway : to put in evidence Clarissa’s insecurity (she wonders what might have happened if she had made other choices). Mrs Brown : to underline how people always wishes more that what they already have. (Laura and Kitty both desire what the other woman has got.)

7. Mrs Woolf : to put in contrast the difference between Virginia’s and her sister’s behaviour. Mrs Dalloway : to evidence the different conception of loving relationship between Clarissa and Louise. Mrs Brown : to reveal how life could become oppressive and nerve-racking and how sometimes people needs to escape from their life.

8. Mrs Woolf : to provide Virginia’s point of view about committing suicide and let the reader to think about it. Mrs Dalloway : to portray Clarissa from the perspective of her reflexive behaviour. Mrs Woolf : to express Virginia’s need to escape from her life in Richmond, returning in London life. She is thinking about what is better for her illness/madness.

9. Mrs Dalloway : to show the difficulty to love someone and to do the right choices. Mrs Brown : to illustrate the renewed consciousness of Laura’s dissatisfactory life (Dan doesn’t understand who she is, and Richie seems too young to have any insight into her thoughts and feelings.) Mrs Dalloway : to give importance to the death, because it remind us to life. The episode is a link between the three stories in the novel.

10. Mrs Brown : to reveal Laura’s detachment feelings from her family life, which indicate that she may be ready to leave it. Mrs Woolf : to underline the separation of Virginia’s two main aspects, the wide-eyed woman and the tormented madman. This shows how Virginia perceives her nature as split or dual. Mrs Brown : to express Laura’s realization of being detached from her life and to feel herself like a loner. Mrs Dalloway : to provide a conclusion through Clarissa’s thoughts: she comes to the realization that life must be taken as it comes and that individual hours can provide moments of joy and profound pleasure.