The Hours by Michael Cunningham: Prologue Analysis

A novel prologue introduces the topic and presents some elements which makes the reader curious in order to give him a reason to go on in reading.
The prologue of Michael Cunningham's The Hours deals with Virginia Woolf's suicide. Two characters are involved in this chapter: Mrs Woolf and Leonard Woolf, her husband. It is composed of three parts: the first one describes Mrs Woolf walk to the river and her immersion in the river; the second regards Mr Woolf's discovery of the letter, the reading of it and his search of his wife. The last one focuses on Virginia Woolf again and it analysis her perception of the above world from the water. So the first part may be defined as a part of reality, as the second; the third a particular view of the world only a sensible person like a writer or a poet can have.
The prologue is set in the Second World Word, in England. In this first part Mrs Woolf is going to a river. While she is walking, she notices everything around her. A man who seems her happy reminds her she has failed and that she is not special. She thinks also of the letters she has left for her husband and her sister, Vanessa Bell.
When she reaches the river, she begins to pick up some stones. She notices everything, even now, near the death: she stops to look a particular stone. She also thinks of Leonard, Vanessa and her nephews, and also to what is inducing her to commit suicide: she hears again the voices in her head and she has again a terribile headache. When she has put the stones in the pocket of her coat she enters the river.
The second part is set an hour later than the events of the first: Mr Woolf enters the home and asks for Virginia. He finds the letters and he discovers her plans, so he runs to the river but he does not find anyone but a fisherman.
The third part comes back to Mrs Woolf: she feels the current is bringing her away, but even under the water she can feel everything above her: a fisherman, a woman with her child, a car with a group of soldiers. The reality is looked from another point of view, external from it.

The themes the prologue introduces are the torment of a poet (a particular person who can feel and see everything), and the death. These themes will be also some of the themes of the whole novel and they are also some of the threads which will lead the novel.
Virginia has got a mental illness and she can't stand again that sufference. She's very sensibile, she can perceive reality in a deepest way than other people, and this makes her different and a wonderful writer. But the deepest vision of reality implies to see also the worse things and situations and this leads her to commite suicide and leave everything behind her.
Death is the only way to escape from all this sufference: she's afraid to leave her family, but she has to do it to free herself.