"The Mark on the Wall and Other Short Fiction" by Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf is often known as a revolutionary of prose and often used themes that were new and hyper-realist. When it comes to existentialism, Woolf often uses realistic observations of the modern world to captivate the reader, sending them on a journey of language through her wild and yet, poetic style of prose in which she will compare the tiniest molecule of life to the entire universe and the object and idea itself all at once. This style of realism is often considered to drift from the storyline, but within these existential ideas is Woolf’s own thoughts veer the reader back to the main plot via an observation on life that is something to do with the actual title and plot. This shows that there is far more to the plot than what the title may suggest and also shows that there may be more than one meaning to the title of which we have not realised until we have read the entire thing. Virginia Woolf also uses thrilling ideas of nature and the natural state of being that constitutes life and death - stating that the anthology was written in “a flash, as if flying, after being kept stone breaking for months…” - the idea seems to be to make the anthology look as if it had been written in only a few drafts and from most ideas that came from the top of her head and from the depths of her heart. There are many themes that link us to other books by Virginia Woolf such as the themes of existentialism and hyper-focus that are worked in to the depths of “Jacob’s Room” (1922) and the realism of emotion in the acts of the mundane that are most often associated with “Mrs Dalloway” (1925) are seen in many of the short stories within this particular text. With darker themes than many Woolf readers may be used to and the arguments of philosophy are introspective to a new degree since the stories are shorter than Woolf’s usual writings. Therefore, when the reader analyses the text for details, there are perceptions that seem a lot longer than the perceptions of the same situations and philosophies the reader encounters in Woolf’s novellas and novels. However, the themes are relatively the same.

In “The Mark on the Wall” Virginia Woolf often strays from the true point of the story in which she analyses a mark on one of her walls. However, she fills the story with an analysis on life, death, humanity and the darkness of the soul. Even when describing the mark on the wall itself, life seems dark and often unsettling:

“The mark was a small round mark, black upon the white wall about six or seven inches above the mantlepiece.” (p.3)

From this point on, Woolf honestly becomes obsessed with the mark on the wall, often relenting into analysing her social situation, her life and the way in which the world works in order to get her mind off the mark. Be that as it may, her mind goes in one full circle, coming back to the endlessness of the mark on the wall, no matter what it actually is. It is not the mark that is actually important but instead where the mark takes her mind:

“But as for the mark, I’m not sure about it; I don’t believe it was made by a nail after all; it’s too big, too round, for that. I might get up, but if I got up and looked at it, ten to one I shouldn’t be able to say for certain; because once a thing’s done no one ever knows how it happened. O dear me, the mystery of life! The inaccuracy of thought! The ignorance of humanity!” (p.4)

This is how the mark on the wall leads her thoughts to another aspect of humanity, however - there is another side to this in which humanity and existentialism lead her to discovering what the mark on the wall actually is:

“Even so, life isn’t done with; there are a million patient, watchful lives still for a tree, all over the world, in bedrooms, in ships, on the pavement, lining rooms where men and women sit after tea, smoking cigarettes…Nothing ever happens. Curse this war! God damn this war! All the same, I don’t see why we should have a snail on our wall. Ah, the mark on the wall! It was a snail.” (p.10)

The reader gets a similar experience in the story “Kew Gardens” in which the observations on life take their analysis from the couples and people perceiving the plants as they walk through the garden that takes the narrators mind from the flowers and scenery, often leading the mind back and forth from the main subject. These are often dark and existential, like in “The Mark on the Wall” and yet, they are observant on people and not particular things like the mark. These people are merely observations and therefore, their characters are not reflected upon the narrator, but instead the narrator’s emotions are reflected upon the reader:

“The figures of these men and women straggled past the flowerbed with a curiously irregular movement not unlike that of the white and blue butterflies who crossed the turf in zig-zag flights from bed to bed. The man was about six inches in front of the woman, strolling carelessly, while she bore on with greater purpose, only turning her head now and then to see that the children were not too far behind. The man kept this distance in front of the woman purposely, though perhaps unconsciously, for he wished to go on with his thoughts.” (p.11)

By the end of the story, the reader gets an observation that is further away from the plants and flowers of the land, but bring the reader right back around to thinking about them one last time as the story’s narrative closes and becomes something else of an observation upon people, rather than the gardens themselves. It is a factor that repeats itself in Woolf’s fiction almost constantly and, like in “The Mark on the Wall”, the reader receives an existential analysis on humanity whilst being slowly drawn back to the main point of the story - but are left incomplete of the narrator’s true thoughts for they are more suited to the term ‘stream-of-consciousness’ than plot-driven narrative:

“Wordless voices, breaking the silence suddenly with such depth of the contentment, such passion of desire, or, in the voices of children, such freshness of surprise; breaking the silence? But there was no silence; all the time the motor omnibuses were turning their wheels and changing their gear; like a vast of Chinese boxes all of wrought steel turning ceaselessly one within the other the city murmured; on the top of which the voices cried aloud and the petals of myriads of flowers flashed their colours into the air.” (p.17)

In “An Unwritten Novel” the reader encounters both a similar state and an entirely different thing. The reader first encounters the same rounded narrative in which they are taken away and then back to the main point. However, the reader also gets a more intense observation into the way in which the narrator’s mind projects the images of humanity into the story. The unwritten aspect of the novel is more about the narrator’s own project than the ‘mark on the wall’ and the ‘kew gardens’ in which the narrator observes them from a distance. The unwritten novel is actually the narrator’s own novel, which has been left without an ending. Therefore, the analysis on humanity, life and death will be more emotive, more passionate and often darker:

“Have I read you right? But the human face - the human face at the top of the fullest sheet of print holds more, withholds more. Now, eyes open, she looks out; and in the human eye - how d’you define it?” (p.23)

The narrator often stops on a very particular subject for longer and does less of a stream-of-consciousness as they are trying to avert from talking about their own particular situation of having something unfinished. It is apparent to the reader that there is no way to return to this unfinished and unwritten business unless the narrator stops purposefully avoiding it and faces the problem which is often much deeper than the unwritten novel itself:

“Grey is the landscape; dim as ashes; the water murmurs and moves. If I fall on my knees, if I go through the ritual, the ancient antics, it’s you, unknown figures, you I adore; if I open my arms, it’s you I embrace, you I draw to me - adorable world!” (p.29)

The darkness of the landscape and the narrator’s mind by the end of the narrative is often associated with this liberation from the one thing holding them back and remaining ‘unwritten’ and ‘unfinished’ in the text and thus, when freed - they can seek to concentrate on the world, themselves and on other aspects of life and death that they would not have been able to concentrate on before. Although, this can also be seen as another aversion and so, the reader is actually unaware as to whether the problem is actually resolved or whether it is just being averted yet again.

These themes are repeated throughout the texts within the book and no matter how long or short the story is, the reader if led through an existential crisis in the form of a stream-of-consciousness and then, led back to the narrative. This can be for one of three reasons: the first reason being that the narrator is overtly focused on what the object can represent, the narrator is avoiding the situation purposefully or that the narrator is trying to apply this object to their own personal situation which the reader can only view in the frame of the narrative and therefore, never know the true or full story. It is a feature that appears in many of Virginia Woolf’s novels and novellas to come afterwards.

Citation:

Woolf, V (2008). The Mark on the Wall and Other Short Fiction. 2nd ed. UK: Oxford World's Classics.