Compares the books, 'The Hours,' by Michael Cunningham, and 'Mrs. Dalloway,' by Virginia Woolf. Selection of 'The Hours' as winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; Depiction of a day in the life of a woman given to musing on her past; Critics' fixation on Woolf's life and art; Events that form the mise-en-scenes for Cunningham's characters.