The Hours Study Guide & Notes

The Hours Plot Summary

Preview of The Hours Summary:

The novel opens with a vivid description of Virginia Woolf's suicide. The plot then moves through time and space to intertwine the lives of three women: Woolf, Laura Brown (an unhappy housewife), and Clarissa Vaughan (the modern-day Mrs. Dalloway). As we switch back and forth between these three women's stories, we experience their lives as told through the events in a single day.

Virginia Woolf's day begins with her writing her new novel, Mrs. Dalloway, and nearly ends with a possible suicide attempt, averted at the last moment by her husband Leonard.

Laura Brown, whose day takes place nine years after Woolf's actual suicide, is the reader of Virginia's book, Mrs. Dalloway, and a fellow candidate for suicide. Her thoughts of suicide that day are also diverted, although we learn from the third storyline (Mrs. Dalloway's/Clarissa Vaughan's) that she later chose to abandon her family instead of committing suicide.

Clarissa...
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