The Hours

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-13

Chapters 14-17

Chapters 18-20

Chapters 21-22

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Further Reading: Literature

Mrs. Dalloway is a classic feminist novel and an exemplar of stream-of-consciousness narration, a style that Woolf helped develop. Reading the novel that inspired The Hours illuminates the full extent of the intertextuality between the two novels. The work is now in the public domain.

Mrs. Dalloway on SuperSummary

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927)

This three-part novel, set between 1910-1920, follows a family’s visits to the Scottish Isle of Skye. The work epitomizes Woolf’s lyrical stream-of-consciousness style and includes very little dialogue, though the narration shifts between different characters’ thoughts. In 1998, the Modern Library assigned the novel 15th place on a list of 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century, and in 2005, TIME magazine placed it among the 100 best English-language novels since 1923. The narrative presents themes of impermanence, subjectivity, and gender roles.

To The Lighthouse on SuperSummary

Further Reading: Beyond Literature (Nonfiction)

“On Being Ill” by Virginia Woolf (1926)

Woolf’s essay argues that illness is an unjustifiably unexplored subject in literature: “Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings […] it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.” The essay was originally published in The Criterion, a British literary magazine founded and run by T. S. Eliot. As a supplement to Woolf’s article, Maria Popova’s essay brings Woolf’s ideas into conversation with other writers and literary critics: “Virginia Woolf on Being Ill as a Portal to Self-Understanding” (The Marginalian, 2008).

On Not Knowing Greek by Virginia Woolf (2008)

This essay collection, compiled in 2008, is offers a more in-depth treatment of Woolf’s relationship with ancient Greek, a language that, in her world, was rife with mythology and fraught with sexism.

“On the Greek-Talking Birds: Virginia Woolf and the Greek-Talking Men” by Tina Oziewicz (2012)

This essay examines the origins and analyzes the meanings of Greek birdsong in Woolf’s fiction, a recurring motif in The Hours. For Woolf, ancient Greek was the language of scholarship, which was exclusively male. As such, ancient Greek was fraught for Woolf, who was excluded from studying Greek at university as men did (she ended up teaching herself). This essay elucidates the feminist connotations to the Greek-speaking birds that appear in The Hours.