The Importance of Narrative Style in Virginia Woolf's the Mark on

the Walla

Khajieva Feruza, Kendjaeva Gulrukh and Rakhimova Shakhnoza

Department of English Literary and Translation Studies, Foreign Languages Faculty, Bukhara State University, Uzbekistan

Keywords: Style, Narrative, Story, Reality.

Abstract: Virginia Woolf’s short story The Mark on the Wall exemplifies modernist literature through its innovative

narrative techniques, particularly the stream of consciousness. This study analyzes how Woolf’s use of this

technique creates a modernistic vision of reality, emphasizing subjective experience and inner reflection. The

analysis involves a close reading of the text, identification of key themes such as war, gender dynamics, and

technological advancements, and a comparison with William James’s psychological theories. The study

demonstrates how Woolf’s narrative style mirrors the complexities of the human mind and the rapidly

changing society of the early XX century, offering a unique portrayal of reality through the protagonist's

contemplative journey.

1 INTRODUCTION

Virginia Woolf’s short story The Mark on the Wall

captures the essence of modernist literature through

its innovative narrative techniques. Woolf, a central

figure in the modernist literary movement, is

renowned for her experimental approach to

storytelling, which often deeply explores the inner

lives of her characters. Her style is characterized by a

departure from linear narratives and an emphasis on

the fluidity of consciousness. In The Mark on the

Wall, Woolf employs the stream of consciousness

technique, a hallmark of her writing, to explore the

protagonist’s contemplation of a mark on the wall.

This narrative style allows readers to experience the

character’s thoughts and reflections on various

aspects of life and society, such as war, nature, gender

dynamics, and self-actualization. Modernism, the

literary movement to which Woolf contributed

significantly, sought to break away from traditional

forms and conventions, emphasizing subjectivity,

fragmented structures, and a focus on individual

consciousness. Through this technique, Woolf

enables a modernistic vision of reality, where

subjective experience and inner reflections are

brought to the

forefront, making the narrative rich in

thoughts, ideas, and self-reflection rather than

actions.

2 METHODOLOGY

This study uses a qualitative approach to analyze the

narrative techniques in Virginia Woolf’s short story

The Mark on the Wall and how these techniques

contribute to a modernistic vision of reality. The

primary source is the text of The Mark on the Wall.

Secondary sources include works by William James,

James Harker, Mine Özyurt Kılıç, F.M. Khajieva, and

Marc D. Cyr. A close reading of the story examines

Woolf’s use of the stream of consciousness

technique, identifying key passages that illustrate the

flow and change of thoughts. Thematic analysis

identifies major themes such as war, gender

dynamics, and technological advancements,

exploring how they are interwoven into the narrative.

Comparative analysis with William James’s

descriptions of thought in The Principles of

Psychology highlights how Woolf’s techniques align

with or differ from psychological theories. The

research is grounded in modernist literary theory,

focusing on subjective experience and narrative

fragmentation. While the study offers insights into

Woolf’s narrative techniques, its findings are specific

to this story and may not generalize to all of Woolf’s

works or modernist literature.

Feruza, K., Gulrukh, K. and Shakhnoza, R.

The Importance of Narrative Style in Virginia Woolf’s the Mark on the Walla.

DOI: 10.5220/0013424700004654

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Humanities Education, Law, and Social Science (ICHELS 2024), pages 717-720

ISBN: 978-989-758-752-8

717

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The main character of the story is a woman, who

sitting in the room suddenly notices the mark on the

wall. The story is based on the thoughts and ideas that

the woman has while observing the mark and trying

to find its’ origin: “I must jump up and see for myself

what that mark on the wall really is- a nail, a rose-

leaf, a crack in the wood?”(Woolf 8) Thinking about

the mark, she also dives into different thoughts

ranging from the war “Curse this war! God damn this

war” (10), nature “Nature counsels, comforts you,

instead of enraging you” (8-9), women and men “the

masculine point of view which governs our lives,

which sets standards” (6-7), self-actualization “I wish

I could hit upon a pleasant track of thought, a track

indirectly reflecting credit upon myself” (5), and each

time the mark on the wall serves to navigate the

infinite stream of ideas that the character has.

Such floating of thought was possible due to the

narrative technique, known as the stream of

consciousness, which refers to the depiction of the

conscious and subconscious world of the character,

by detailed delivery of the narrator’s thoughts and

impressions. William James, American philosopher

and psychologist, who coined the term “stream of

thought” and “stream of consciousness”, in his book

The Principles of Psychology, outlines five important

characteristics of thought: “1) Every thought tends to

be part of a personal consciousness. 2) Within each

personal consciousness thought is always changing.

3) Within each personal consciousness thought is

sensibly continuous. 4) It always appears to deal with

objects independent of itself. 5) It is interested in

some parts of these objects to the exclusion of others,

and welcomes or rejects, chooses from among them,

in a word all the while” (James 225). These

characteristics align with Woolf’s stream of

consciousness technique, emphasizing the continuous

and changing nature of thought, as well as its

selective focus on certain objects, mirroring the

protagonist's contemplative journey in Woolf’s story.

According to F.M. Khajieva, stream of

consciousness is “a narrative style that mirrors the

unstructured, free-flowing nature of human thought,

presenting a character’s immediate and often

fragmented stream of thoughts and

perceptions.”(Khajieva 65) In the short story “The

Mark on the Wall” such technique enabled the writer

to cover almost every issue that the society of the

period had within several pages. Therefore, the

importance of narration cannot be neglected and

needs to be analyzed.

First, it is important to note that the rise of interest

in human nature and psyche was observed in the XX

century. Fundamental works of Sigmund Freud in

psychoanalysis and unconsciousness provoked the

urge for self-reflection. James Harker also mentions

that in most of the Virginia Woolf’s characters’

“inner life is rich with sensation and thought, inspired

by the lowest and most common of material artifacts”

(2). In the story the main character is also trying to

reflect the unconscious parts of her mind: “I want to

sink deeper, away from the surface, with its hard

separate facts” (5). She is trying to explore every

aspect of her unconsciousness, dive deep into own

inner world, as she finds it intriguing: “I want to think

quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted,

never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from

one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or

obstacle” (5). Such aspiration to think and reflect

upon oneself in the literary analysis, considering the

narrative technique, is called stream of

consciousness. Harker exemplifies such narration by

describing how “characters are constantly observing

and thinking as they navigate the world, whether that

means sitting alone in a room contemplating an

ordinary object, taking a walk, going to a party or

looking out the window” (2). Such techniques of

narration became common during the XX century in

the works of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.

In “The Mark on the Wall”, the character also

depicts the way the thoughts and memories emerge.

“How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object,

lifting it a little way, as ants carry a blade of a straw

so feverishly, and then leave it” (3). All the thoughts

that the woman has are as quick flashes appear for a

moment and suddenly perish, again focusing of the

small mark on the wall, which in my opinion, hardly

resembles the reality, but instead is the perfect

representation of the changeable period where the

story is set.

However, another interesting opinion about the

snail, its’ role in the story and narrative technique was

given by Kılıç, who suggests that “the narrator

focuses her creative energy on the snail, the very

mark on the wall; and Woolf portrays the narrator’s

mind at work trying to identify the mark in tune with

the pace of the snail” (21). In other words, Kılıç

considers that the narrative style of the story imitates

the pace of the snail enabling “the text invites its

reader to a rhythm that would allow her to attend to

these images with a similarly slow pace” (20). Such

comparison of the narrative style and its speed can be

significant since it can imply to the ways the thoughts

are originated in one’s mind. At the same time, it

allows the reader to fully immerse into the main

character’s inner world in the authentic manner of

contemplating. Kılıç considers, that “the medium and

the message act in unison to convey the absorbed

interest, the very source and the product of the text”

(21), specifically the words and the structure of the

ICHELS 2024 - The International Conference on Humanities Education, Law, and Social Science

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sentences follow the pace of the snail movement, so

they can reflect the way the character is thinking.

In my opinion, such interpretation of the role of

the snail in the story can be argued, since the speed of

how fast and unpredictably the thoughts change in the

story cannot be mimetic to the slow and sluggish

moves of the snails. For example, after long

contemplations on the “masculine point of view

which governs our lives” (Woolf 6-7) its effects and

consequences, the main character suddenly changes

her focus to the mark again “in certain lights that mark

on the wall seems actually to project from the wall”

(7). Such rapid change of the thoughts from the

general ideas about the issues the character is dealing

with and the nature of the mark on the wall, which

becomes a pattern in the narration, in my opinion, is

not characteristic to the nature of snails, but it can

represent the fast changes the society of that time was

undergoing. For examples, the narrator thinks: “if one

wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it

to being blown through the Tube at fifty miles an

hour” (4). The narrator is not able to catch up with the

rapidness of life, and probably, therefore, the focus of

her thoughts changes so fast.

On the importance of the narration in the story Cyr

brought a new perspective. According to his point of

view the narrative style of Virginia Woolf in general

“models Christian eschatology, a concept condemned

not with the end of the world per se, but rather with

the perspective that knowledge of an end brings to

present understanding” (16). He considers that the

setting of the story during the World War I and the

issues of death can be the sign of eschatological

narration:“Foremost among these social condemns

and pertinent to eschatology is Woolf’s treatment of

death” (Cyr 17). Such interpretation can lead to the

assumption that the importance of War and the death

are integral in understanding the story and the

message that the writer wants to deliver. Even though

the text does not contain the direct references to the

war and death till the very end of the story “Curse this

war! God damn this war” (10), there are still some

implications of the wartime. For example, while the

narrator is recalling the past, she says: “only when we

were torn asunder” (3), which may be a mention of

the war.

In my opinion, the importance of the war is in the

story cannot be neglected; however, there is

kaleidoscope of other significant topics presented in

“The Mark on the Wall”. The story touches many

different issues relevant to the historical period it

belongs. One of them deals with different perspective

towards the role of men and women. For instance, the

narrator thinks about the Whitaker’s Table of

Precedency and “the masculine point of view, which

sets the standards” “will be laughed into the dustbin

where the phantoms go” (7). Such thoughts help the

reader understands that the Victorian era and its ideas

are passing, but modernistic vision of the world is

already replacing the past.

The opposition between the nature and the rapid

progress of science can also be considered as one of

the topics that concern the narrator. The development

of the technology and engineering in the example of

the above mentioned “the Tube at fifty miles an hour-

landing at the other end without a single hairpin in

one’s hair!” (4), which the narrator describes to be “so

haphazard” (4) is contrasted to “something definite,

something real” (9), which turns to be the nature:

“Wood is a pleasant thing to think about” (9). The

unknown and new feelings brought by technology

seem to tempest the narrator, which can also be

applied to the rest of the society.

The fast pace of the changes may overwhelm a

person, as it is hard to accept and adjust them. A

person may start to be dubious about the future, not

knowing what to expect next. The historical

background of XX century also did not show any

resolution to the problems people had. So the only

thing, which was certain, was the present. People,

being disappointed in the past and perplexed by

future, could only rely on themselves in the present.

For example, in “The Mark on the Wall”, the narrator

tries to focus and stops on thought of Shakespeare,

drawing his image. “To steady myself, let me catch

hold on the first idea that passes… Shakespeare…”

(5).

But, she claims: “But how dull this is, this

historical fiction! It doesn’t interest me at all” (5).

Then she continues her search for something more

pleasant to think about: “I wish I could hit upon a

pleasant track of thought, a track indirectly reflecting

credit upon myself, for those are the pleasantest

thoughts, and very frequent even in the minds of

modest mouse-coloured people, who believe

genuinely that they dislike to hear their own praises.

They are not thoughts directly praising oneself; that

is the beauty of them” (5). So, the narrator finds the

delight in thinking about herself and reflecting her

own personality, this can also point to the perception

of reality by the character; to her the real world is in

her own mind, she herself right at that moment is the

only thing, which true and cannot be argued.

4 CONCLUSION

In general, “The Mark on the Wall” is a complex story

about the modern world. The reality in this text is

relative, the mark, which caught the narrator’s

attention, despite of its nature, in my opinion serves

as a trigger for the thoughts and complex

contemplations about life. The mark can also be

The Importance of Narrative Style in Virginia Woolf’s the Mark on the Walla

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compared to the button, which turns the women into

the reality, like the Big Ban was used in Woolf’s

novel “Miss Dalloway”. However, the reality for the

narrator is not represented by the mark on the wall;

the real world can be elusive, the fact that the mark

turned out to be a snail can emphasize this, but she

finds the real world in her thoughts, the real world

which sees through the prism of her own personal

experience. The character of Woolf’s story is

hyperopic image of the modernistic society, their

problems, concerns and thoughts. And the stream of

consciousness used in the story allowed the writer to

depict the reality in the very original way.

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