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Summary
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
It’s 1941 in England, near the start of World War II, and a woman (Virginia Woolf) rushes out of her home in a coat that’s too heavy for the temperature. She has left a note for Leonard (her husband) and one for Vanessa (her older sister). Virginia walks toward the river, looking for stones and putting them into the pockets of her jacket. Then she walks into the river. At one point, she considers turning back, but she knows that if she does, Leonard and Vanessa will never let her out again.
The prologue dramatizes the real-life death of Virginia Woolf, who wrote the novel Mrs. Dalloway. The sections about Virginia’s life are fictional, as they include elements from history that no one could know (like what Virginia was thinking in the moments before her death), but these sections also incorporate real facts, like that Virginia left notes for her husband and sister before she died.
Themes
Leonard finds his letter from Virginia and fears it may be a suicide note. He rushes out to find her. Meanwhile, Virginia’s body floats quickly down the current of the river. After a short journey, the body stops somewhere beneath the water, near a stone column from a bridge. Above, a young boy throws a stick through the slats on the side of the bridge, and the stick floats down. A truck of soldiers passes the bridge, and the boy waves to them, so one soldier waves back. Virginia’s body stays pressed to the bottom of the river.
Virginia’s death suggests that she was the victim of forces larger than herself (represented by the current that carries her body along). The floating of Virginia’s body in the river current hints at how time inevitably moves people forward. The soldiers passing the boy on the bridge hint at World War II and the tumult in Europe, which may have even played some role in motivating Virginia’s suicide.
Themes
