THE PROLUGUE

In the prologue Michael Cunningham describes Virginia Woolf's last moments before her suicide.
In 1941, during Second World War, Mrs Woolf decides to suicide because she can not bear the voices anymore and because she thinks her life a failure. After leaving a note for her husband Leonard and her sister Vanessa, she heads to the river. She picks up a stone and she puts it in her pocket, then she dives in the chill water and the current sweeps her away up to Southease bridge where she is stopped by a piling. Here her body absorbs the vibrations prodeced by the people and vehicle crossing the bridge. in the prologue it is also present the letter written by Virginia Woolfs for her husband, in which she explains she can not bear her disease and she daclares Leonard was the only person who could give her happiness.
The prologue has the function of present one of the three main character of the novel. Furthermore, with the tragic event of Mrs Woolf's suicide creates curiosity about Mrs Woolf's disease and about what may come next in the novel and it also predisposes the reader to expect unhappy facts like this.