Compare the modernism of Mrs. Dalloway to the postmodernism of The Hours, specifically how the writers use form and structure.

Virginia Woolf is one of the most important English modernist authors. She was exceptionally good at using modernist elements in her writing, most notably in Mrs. Dalloway, one of her most famous novels, which she published in 1925.
For one, she presents her characters in terms of duality—both who they are now and who they were in their past lives. She explains how their histories led them to become the people they are now. By using a technique called stream of consciousness, Woolf brings into the spotlight the characters' minds and helps the reader gain insight into their innermost thoughts.
Two other clear characteristics of modernism Woolf uses are the absence of the omniscient narrator and the ambiguous ending. The characters' lines of thinking are also distinctly associative and nonsequential—yet another characteristic of modernism.
On the other hand, in the novel The Hours (published in 1998), American novelist Michael Cunningham takes a distinctly postmodern approach. This is very clear from the get-go; postmodern literature is known to take inspiration, if not literal fragments, from the literature that precedes it. This is exactly what Cunningham does The Hours. There is a great deal of intertextuality, meaning that the story involves many references to Woolf's works (especially Mrs. Dalloway). Cunningham even takes material from Virginia Woolf's own life for part of his braided narrative.