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The Mark on the Wall - Virginia Woolf - Coggle Diagram
The Mark on the Wall - Virginia Woolf
Context:
written in 1917 - end of WW1
collected together w/ other stories in "Monday or Tuesday" 1921
short story w/out actual plot
reflections + ranting - sometimes philosophical, partly story + partly essay
Woolf unusual for women writers at the time
plays with banality of what is real and isn't - cubist ensemble of realist elements, sense of fragmentation + out of focus
Overview:
we don't know the narrator - just someone who notices a mark on the wall in their house
there is and isn't anything special about the mark, story is and isn't about the mark - the mark on the wall is a mere opportunity for the narrator to reflect, think, daydream
speculating on the reason for such a mark, narrator is able to reflect upon nature of life, death, nature of art
stream of consciousness
themes - war, gender, philosophy - perceptions of reality
longing for the "real thing"
Similarities + Differences w/ Joyce
Similarities
Focus on inner consciousness rather than external action.
Interest in subjective perception and fleeting thoughts.
Everyday situations become triggers for reflection and memory.
Early modernist experimentation with representing mental life.
Differences
More structured narrative with clear plot and social setting.
Uses free indirect discourse to access Gabriel’s thoughts.
Culminates in a moment of epiphany about life, death, and identity.
Woolf – “The Mark on the Wall”
Minimal plot; narrative driven almost entirely by wandering thought.
Mind moves through associations, speculation, and reflection.
The object (the mark) becomes a starting point for mental exploration
The Dead
Quotations:
"middle of January in the present"
winter and war
-reminiscing about a past time, immersing reader into physical environment but also into her own mind, what she was thinking - stream of consciousness
"smoke of my cigarette"
intoxicating environment
"cavalcade of red knights"
war going on - not feeling completely protected, thoughts move from one feeling to another
stream of consciousness, not controlled as in JJ, out of control, playing with mind to get it into the right place
"rather to my relief" - dangerous fantasy-war going on , moving from place to place, afraid where mind is taking her
"one will never see them again"
creating characters in her mind and becoming embedded in them
"young man about to hit the tennis ball...rushes past in the train"
got interrupted, fast movement - all accidents and quick things that can happen when you're least expecting
war link, bombs also sudden impacts - working with this interruption - cause of speech, so concerned about war
"looking glass smashes"
humbling oneself to make sure the fall when something bad happens isn't so deep
danger that is opposite of the effort of stream of consciousness - if you have expectations of a romantic figure (idols, sublime elements), you risk the image cracking and you see shell of the person
microscope, alice in wonderland - "Through the Looking-Glass" - perception of yourself, mirror, what is real - what makes one real, what is reality, what is perception or appearances
"a world not to be lived in"
importance of fancy, without that people will become shells - romantic notion
"underground railways" - modern life, in transport, very close to each other in physicality but very distant, not close at all
"gleam of glassiness" - modernity depersonalised
"not one reflection but an almost infinite number" -modern, almost post-modern -reality of not having an essence - an amount of different reflections - mirror throws many things at you- have to deal with infinite number
"phantoms they will pursue - novelists in future - reality is not there, essential - depends on perspective and specific reflection you get, changing constantly concerns her - no essence
"carpets in corridors of the royal palaces"
status and manners - class critique
"indeed half-phantoms" -class hierarchies criticism - Bloomsbury group - upper class - were bohemian
questioning the issues of class and fixed gender roles - avant-garde - trying to contest and challenge roles that were stagnated in victorian period
"should you be a woman"
social critique - "governs our lives", feminist
"Whittaker's Table of Precedency"
laid out the castes of English society in hierarchical relationship to each other
suggests the profound disruption of traditional English society by World War I and the suggestion that new social orders could be possible.
hierarchy and level of order - if you don't know that, you're not real - social class w/ philosophy
"intoxicating sense of illegitimate freedom - if freedom exists..." - illegitimate gives idea of stuck in gender and class roles - not full freedom
Stream of Consciousness
first used by William James - "The Principles of Psychology"
metaphor of the sculptor
stone contains many possible statues, but sculptor selects and reveals one
the world we experience is one interpretation selected from a larger mass of sensations
reality is as we experience - partly constructed by attention + mental selection
Many possibilities at once: The mind is a “theatre of simultaneous possibilities.”
Consciousness compares options and chooses certain perceptions or thoughts while inhibiting others
Layered mental processing:Raw sensations → perceptions → ideas → complex thought
James + Freud
problem of the self
both shift psychology towards subjective mind
James - emphasises reality is organised around individual perspective
Freud shows the mind is structured internally, not transparent to itself
James - consciousness a continuous flow of thoughts/feelings/perceptions, mind is not a set of separate ideas but a moving stream
Freud - what lies beneath that stream, thoughts flow but that mental process is unconscious, the conscious stream is only the surface, below are repressed wishes/memories