The beginning of Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf focus its attention to Clarissa's social position. The most important information is that Clarissa is married . The beginning of Virginia Woolf's version describe Clarissa's private life, her interests and her economic status (the text convey to reader that Clarissa lives in wealth because she can employ servants to help her in houseworks). The name is not important, indeed the narrator writes it after many lines. Than, narrator describes the things she like, such as nature, flowers, parties. The narrative technique is third person omniscient narrator: narrator knows Clarissa feelings and intentions. However, there are many "spys" into the text which suggest the narrator's intrusion (and then, for instance, or paranthesis). Narrative style is quick, there is a large use of full stops and short phrases. As a consequence the reading is faster. There are many quotations, direct dialogues.
On the other hand, the beginning of Mrs Dalloway by Michael Cunningham (exctract from The Hours) focus its attention to the situation. The beginning gives informations to the reader about space and time where events happen. The reader immediately understands there's a party to organize. Clarissa is buying flowers and cleaning the house without servants. In this case, Cunningham's aim is to splash authority: there are no servants to help Clarissa, she has not got the power to assign tasks to other people. Cunningham, opposite from Woolf, criticize what he writes: the narrator is a third impersonal omniscient narrator who comment what happens through paranthesis or explicit comments. The narrative style is slower than Virginia Woolf's one: the text has got an equilibrated use of punctuation and phrases have medium and changable lenghts.