Michael Cunningham's novel opens with a prologue.

The name prologue, comes from two different words: the Latin world pro, which means in favour of and the Greek word logos which means speech and  it has an introductory function, because it introduces the reader the main topic.

The Hours prologue deals with a tragic event: Virginia Woolf's suicide. After have read about this event the readers are asked to imagine something happened before or after; to give an example they can imagine Virginia family's reaction , also because the novelist inserts in the prologue the letter she wrote before committing suicide.

The writer gives the reader some information about the setting: the novel is set during the Second World War, precisely in 1941 near a country closed to a river.

Virgina is described while she is going toward the river. She is wearing a coat too heavy for the weather and while she is hurrying from the house she in looking around and thinking of his own life and work. In particular her problems stands out : she suffers of headache and she listens  some voices murmuring behind her.

Then the novelist lists the actions she does before going into the river even without removing her shoes; then she pauses and thinks of his family but however she decides to insist in her purpose. Immediately after M. Cunningham describes how she steps or stumbles forward and the current wraps itself around her and take her  with  sudden , muscular force.

With the aim of creating suspance the writer changes setting and writes about the moment Leonard (Virgina's husband)  returns home  and finds her wife's letter on the sitting room table ; it is reproduced in the prologue by M. Cunningham in order to make the reader able to read it too. He immediately races from the room and runs to the river searching his wife , pasting the same places Virginia pasted an hour before.

Then the setting chances again and the novelist focuses his attention to Virginia's last moments of live. She is  borne quickly by the current until she comes to rest against one of the Southease's bridge pilings. By this position she can see and absorb everything is happening : a truck passing, a three- years child crossing the bridge with his mother and  an olive-drab truck, loaded with soldiers in uniform waving to the little boy who has just thrown a stick into the river.