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 lıç, 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
Copyright © 2025 by Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
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
718
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 Woolfs the Mark on the Walla
719
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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