Virginia Woolf
1921
In this short story, a woman notices a mark on a wall.
It was wintertime, and we had just finished our tea when I looked up and saw the mark on the wall for the first time. The mark was a small, round mark, black upon the white wall, about six or seven inches above the mantelpiece.
How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a little way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it... If that mark was made by a nail, it can’t have been for a picture, it must have been for a portrait — the portrait of a lady with white powdered curls, powder-dusted cheeks, and lips like red carnations. A fraud of course, for the people who had this house before us would have chosen pictures in that way — an old picture for an old room. That is the sort of people they were — very interesting people, and I think of them so often, in such odd places, because one will never see them again, never know what happened next.
But as for that mark, I don’t believe it was made by a nail after all; it’s too big, too round, for that. I might get up, but if I got up and looked at it, ten to one I shouldn’t be able to say for certain. Once a thing’s done, no one ever knows how it happened. Dear me, the mystery of life; the inaccuracy of thought! The ignorance of humanity! To show how very little control of our possessions we have — what an accidental affair this living is after all our civilization — let me just count the array of things lost in one lifetime, beginning, for that seems always the most mysterious of losses — what cat would gnaw, what rat would nibble — three pale blue canisters of book-binding tools? Then there were the bird cages, the iron hoops, the steel skates, the coal bucket, the accordion — all gone, and jewels, too. Opals and emeralds, they lie about the roots of turnips. The wonder is that I’ve any clothes on my back, that I sit surrounded by solid furniture at this moment. Why, if one wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it to being blown through an underground railway at fifty miles an hour — landing at the other end without a single hairpin in one’s hair!
And yet that mark on the wall is not a hole at all. It may even be caused by some round black substance, such as a small rose leaf left over from the summer, for I am not a very vigilant housekeeper.
In certain lights that mark on the wall seems actually to protrude from the wall. Nor is it entirely circular. I cannot be sure, but it seems to cast a perceptible shadow, suggesting that if I ran my finger down that strip of the wall it would, at a certain point, mount and descend a small tumulus.
No, no, nothing is proved, nothing is known. And if I were to get up at this very moment and ascertain that the mark on the wall is really — what shall we say? — the head of a gigantic old nail, driven in two hundred years ago, which has now, owing to the patient attention of many generations of housemaids, revealed its head above the coat of paint, and is taking its first view of modern life, what should I gain? — Knowledge or reason for further speculation? I can think while sitting still just as well as standing up. And what is knowledge?
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?
Here is nature once more at her old game of self-preservation. This train of thought, she perceives, is threatening mere waste of energy. I understand Nature’s game — her prompting to take action as a way of ending any thought that threatens to excite or to pain. Still, there's no harm in putting a full stop to one’s disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on the wall.
Indeed, now that I have fixed my eyes upon it, I feel that I have grasped a plank in the sea; I feel a satisfying sense of reality. Here is something definite, something real. Thus, waking from a midnight dream of horror, one hastily turns on the light and lies motionless, worshipping the chest of drawers, worshipping solidity, worshipping reality, worshipping the impersonal world which is proof of some existence other than ours. That is what one wants to be sure of... Wood is a pleasant thing to contemplate. It comes from a tree, and trees grow, and we don’t know how they grow. For years and years they grow, indifferent to us, in meadows, in forests, and by the side of rivers — all things one likes to think about. Someone is standing over me and saying —
“I’m going out to buy a newspaper.”
“Yes?”
“Though it’s useless buying newspapers... Nothing ever happens. Nevertheless, I don’t see why we should have a snail on our wall.”
Ah, the mark on the wall! It was a snail.
Text: "The Mark on the Wall" from Monday or Tuesday by Virginia Woolf (1921) is in the public domain. This text has been modified.
Image: "black fireplace" by Birmingham Museums Trust is licensed under CC0.
Assessment Questions
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35
12 out of 35 Answered
Question 13
Which option best summarizes the passage?
A. A woman guesses at the source of a mark on the wall until finally learning it is a snail.
B. A woman describes how a mark on the wall has been present for several generations.
C. A woman makes up stories about the source of the mark on the wall to entertain a friend.
D. A woman is too exhausted after a long day to get up and identify a mysterious mark on the wall.
1 answer
The option that best summarizes the passage is:
A. A woman guesses at the source of a mark on the wall until finally learning it is a snail.
This option captures the main focus of the passage, where the woman speculates about the nature of the mark on the wall and ultimately discovers it is a snail. Other options do not reflect the central theme as effectively as option A does.
