“Mark on the Wall”

One can make the argument that probably no other story in Virginia Woolf ‘s oeuvre is more excoriating about men's influence on women and its tendency toward marginalizing women as the other than “Mark on the Wall.” A close reading of the text clearly indicates that much of the Weltschmerz is directly related to the authority of male figures, not only over female figures but over other less authoritarian male figures as well. The political components in the text only tell part of the story since the narrator (presumably a woman) is subtly (or not so subtly) being influenced by a male presence in the room. The notion of the masculine and the authority that parallels that notion is implicit throughout the story relegating the female voice to the margins, but it is dramatically accented at the very end of the story, which acts as a coda to what Woolf has been alluding to throughout the story.

One can see three distinct periods in the short story evolution of Woolf ‘s work: 1917– 21, 1923– 29 and 1938– 41. During the first period, Woolf was looking for a method to express her vision of reality, and this period was probably her most experimental. It is also in this period that we find both “Mark on the Wall” and “Kew Gardens.” The second phase, 1923– 29, includes all the stories gathered into the Mrs. Dalloway collection, including “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond St.” These stories are less experimental than her earlier ones, but also tend to use techniques that advance elements of theme, dialogue and structure. It is also during this period we find the rudiments of what is to follow in her novels. In her third period, 1938– 41, we get some satiric pieces such as “Scenes from the Life of a British Naval Officer” and “Ode Written Partly in Prose […].” We also get a more traditional kind of writing, as in “The Duchess and the Jeweller,” “Gipsy, the Mongrel” and “The Legacy” in which she relies heavily on plot, incident and traditional devices of characterization and description in ways that she earlier rejected.