The Process of Thinking
“The Mark on the Wall” is a particularly accessible example of stream-of-consciousness narrative. At the far end of the spectrum are works like James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, which so strives to duplicate the process of unconscious thought that it remains forever impenetrable to most readers (and for good reason: that process is so foreign to what we recognize as conscious thinking that it probably can never be accurately replicated). By contrast, “The Mark on the Wall” is a glimpse of how conscious thought is connected to the mystery of the unconscious. The narrative is just ephemeral enough to be designated as “experimental fiction,” but artificial enough to make it recognizable and provide that glimpse into the yet-unknowable. Woolf shows how our minds jump from thought to thought without a hierarchy, are prompted by external events and both conscious and unconscious internal processes, are valuable in their own right even though they stand in contrast to action, and, in the vehicle of fiction, are conducive toward a more nuanced, deeper, and truthful account of the world.
Perceptual Streaming
What is the mark on the wall? Well, if there is a plot to the story, it might well be the solution to that mystery, except that the mystery could have been easily solved very quickly: the narrator could have gotten out of her chair, walked close enough to wall to see for herself what the mark was, and then sat back down, all within half a minute. Instead, she spends far more time considering what it might be, and this perception of possibilities leads her to flights of fancy about a host of other subjects. Those flights of fancy are not the road to solving the mystery: rather, they are the real meat of the narrative. The final revelation leaves one to wonder if the narrator’s mind might have gone to such a host of different topics had she been just a few inches closer to the wall, or if her perceptual abilities were just a bit keener. What if she could have figured out what the mark on the wall without having to get up? Would the story be entirely different? Slightly different? Exactly the same? The point seems to be that even seemingly insignificant alterations in perceptual ability can have significant effects on how one's stream of consciousness flows.
Communication in Marriage
A recurring motif in the works of Virginia Woolf is the gulf that exists between husbands and wives. This theme is not directly addressed in the sense of it being a major point of consideration in the narrator’s long inner monologue; rather, the issue lies simmering quietly by virtue of it not being addressed. The narrator makes just one brief reference to not being alone in the room in the first paragraph when she casually sets the scene: “Yes, it must have been the winter time, and we had just finished our tea.” For the bulk of the story, however, she might as well be completely alone. Only five lines from the end of the story does the other person in the room re-enter the narrative; the shockingly prosaic announcement of this presence—“I’m going out to buy a newspaper”—is like having cold water thrown in the face. The monologue of the narrator is so distinctly at odds with this reminder that another person has been there the whole time that, suddenly, the lack of communication becomes an essential theme in a story that has seemed to be about little more than communication. The reader is forced to realize that they likely know more about what goes on inside this woman’s head than her own husband does.
Modern Life
The narrator's stream-of-consciousness narration, in which her thoughts jump from one to another, mirrors the quality of life in the modern world. Life is haphazard, fast-paced, fragmented, confusing, and full of domineering people and ideologies attempting to shake us from peace and pleasant rumination into action and decisiveness. Rules, hierarchies, and "generalizations" ostensibly govern the world—though the narrator claims that, in this disruptive time of war, such things are sinking into oblivion—and the quest for knowledge seems more important than the knowledge itself. In order to alleviate the pressures of modern life with "its hard separate facts," she wants to "sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface."
Lack of Closure
Even as the truth about the mark appears to resolve itself at the end of the story, the reader is left with a mixture of disappointment and doubt about the mark truly being a snail. As Mark Cyr notes, "the closure to the story may...be an example of the tenacity of the 'masculine point of view,' but an example that bears within it a 'proof' of the nature of reality Woolf has been presenting." In fact, much of the story resists closure altogether. The narrator's ruminations and vignettes never really end; she simply moves from one to another. Major questions about her and her life and when exactly she is narrating her thoughts remain at the end of the story. Woolf emphasizes, as Nena Skrbic writes, "the impossibility of telling a complete story" and the impossibility of discerning the "real truth."
