The Ghosts
The ghosts in the story “A Haunted House” are former residents who lived in the house many centuries earlier. The wife died and the husband subsequently left home to become a wanderer. They have returned to the home—now occupied by another husband and wife—as spirits that seem to be searching for something. It will eventually be found in the “spirit” of love the current residents express toward one another.
Poll
Poll is just one of several women characters at the center of the story “A Society” in which the real main character is literature and the power invested in the act of reading to mold and shape one’s entire life. Poll, however, is really the most fascinating of the women. Considered less than attractive enough to catch the eye of a man wealthy enough to sustain the life style with which she is accustomed, it is deemed a necessity that she be able to depend upon her father’s inheritance. Only one minor obstacle stands to obstruct her from this inheritance: her father has mandated that before she can collect the estate, she must read every book contained with the London Library.
Minnie Marsh
Minnie Marsh is a character in the truest sense of the word: hers is the fictional name and biography attributed to an unknown stranger sitting across from the narrator on a train. In what is really another celebration of literature, the narrator is moved to reconstruct her fictional biography of “Minnie” on the fly in the face of narrative dead-ends and creative inspirations.
The Music Lover
Another narrator without name records the events of going to a performance by “The String Quartet.” Like the other stories in this collection, this story is an impressionistic stream-of-consciousness accounting of events punctuated by snatches of dialogue and interior monologue. Short on story, lacking plot and even featuring thin characterization, the music lover’s recounting of what went on during the quartet’s performance stands alongside the bulk of this collection as more a demonstration of the possibilities of literary technique than anything else.
The Snail
The story “Kew Gardens” is populated by a host of human characters: a husband and wife and their two kids, the younger companion of an older man who can’t stop talking, a romantic young couple who might be on a first date and the narrator. In comparison to the descriptions of these humans, however, the narrator’s description of the snail as it slowly, but inexorably makes it way unnoticed by everyone else in the soil of the garden seems to be the only creature with a sense of purpose and meaning. The snail also rings important as a result of a connection to the final story in this collection.
The Woman Looking at the Mark on the Wall
“The Mark on the Wall” is another-first person impressionistic account of a narrator. The central focus here is more self-contained than some of the more experimental examples earlier. The woman looking at the mark on the wall from a chair across the room muses about what the mark might be while distractions and musings flow in and out of those thoughts. Content to imagine the possibilities instead of getting up and finding out, her reveries on the failure of the patriarchy to live up to their unqualified power comes a brusque end when he unidentified companion in the room—most likely her husband—suddenly complains about living in a house where snails crawl on the wall.
