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Chapter 1: Mrs. Dalloway
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Hours, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Passage of Time
Suicide and Mental Health
Marriage, Relationships, and Personal Fulfillment
Reading and Writing
Summary
Analysis
In Richmond (a suburb of London) in 1923, Virginia Woolf lies in bed thinking of how to begin her novel, Mrs. Dalloway. She imagines Mrs. Dalloway saying something, then getting flowers. She considers various possibilities before deciding she finally has to get up and write. Leonard is already up. Virginia gets ready in the bathroom, then goes down to take coffee.
Like all of the chapters about Woolf, this one uses the real facts of her life as the starting point for a lightly fictionalized story. Woolf’s chapters explore the writing process, showing how, as much as books might seem like permanent objects when they’re finished, they begin as something uncertain and full of possibility.
Themes
At the breakfast table, Leonard is reviewing proofs of a book. Leonard tries to make Virginia eat more for breakfast than just coffee, but she refuses, promising to have a big lunch. She goes back upstairs, thinking that she just needs to stay healthy so she can convince Leonard to move back to the city of London. She likes to skip eating to stay clear-headed enough to write. At last, she grabs her pen and writes “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”
In many ways, Leonard’s meticulous style of working seems to bear more resemblance to the stereotype of a great writer than Virginia’s approach does. Virginia, for her part, mixes her everyday thoughts (like how to move back to London) with her literary thoughts—which this novel suggests might be one of her strengths as a writer.
Themes
