Open Access
American Research Journal of English and Literature
ISSN (Online): 2378-9026
DOI: 10.46568/arjel
A Story of Multiple Thresholds: A Close Reading of Virginia Woolf’s Short Story “The Mark on the Wall”
Abstract
Within Virginia Woolf’s body of short fiction, “The Mark on the Wall” stands out as a unique but also intriguing story. The
story’s early neglect and subsequent recognition mirror the difficulties that readers and commentators have had with its
unusual form and content. This essay proposes to explain the changes that have recently occurred in critical appreciations
of “The Mark on the Wall” by linking these to a major feature of the story, namely the ways in which it anticipates not only
developments in Woolf’s career as a writer of fiction, but also post-modern theories of knowledge and truth. Woolf’s story,
it will be argued, marked the beginning of Woolf’s career as a writer of short fiction, shaped the direction that her longer
novels would later take, and confirmed the intersections between her personal experience, in this case the experience of
illness, and her artistic endeavor. This essay will rely on a close reading of “The Mark on the Wall” to explore these and
other facets of the story that make of it, indeed, a work of multiple thresholds for its author.
