Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple.
The opening line of “A Haunted House” sets the stage for central concern of this short tale. Woolf quickly establishes that this is not going to be a typical ghost story as the narrator indicates no fear and refers to the spirits in a way that situates them as not-threatening entities. The hand-in-hand reference also foreshadows concluding revelation.
Poll, I must tell you, has always been queer. For one thing her father was a strange man. He left her a fortune in his will, but on condition that she read all the books in the London Library. We comforted her as best we could; but we knew in our hearts how vain it was. For though we like her, Poll is no beauty; leaves her shoe laces untied; and must have been thinking, while we praised men, that not one of them would ever wish to marry her.
This line which occurs early in the story is a bit misleading out of context. As breathtakingly imaginative as the circumstances describe here are and as potentially rich a plot could be created from the circumstance described, “A Society” is not really about Poll’s efforts to win her inheritance. She is just one of several woman who contribute to the narrative that Woolf follows here. Although Woolf never specifically explained it as such, when reading the description of Poll’s rather unique situation, one cannot help but get the feeling that she was making a statement. This collection features stories that experiments in writing fiction that is independent of traditional constructive elements like plot and dimensional character. Poll’s background information can come to seem within such a context as the author’s way of telling critics she could write a traditional story in a conventional way that would if she wanted, but she doesn’t because she has chosen not to.
But the hard glass drips on to the marble; the pools hover above the desert sand; the camels lurch through them; the pools settle on the marble; rushes edge them; weeds clog them; here and there a white blossom; the frog flops over; at night the stars are set there unbroken.
Yes, this quote seems pretty nonsensical. Yes, it is beautifully written, but taken out of context seems to have no discernible purpose or intent. No, reading the rest of this two-part story (divided into one block paragraph titled “Green” and one block paragraph titled “Blue”) won’t clear anything up. “Blue and Green” is Woolf is at her most experimentally avant-garde. The rest of the sentences in both the paragraphs making up the story are equally confusing. But interesting.
“Though it’s no good buying newspapers.... Nothing ever happens. Curse this war; God damn this war! ... All the same, I don’t see why we should have a snail on our wall.”
“The Mark on the Wall” is an interior monologue covering the stream-of-consciousness thoughts of a woman looking at a mark on the wall and musing about what it might be. The swarm of thoughts covered during the chronological time frame of this story range from theories about what, exactly, the mark on the wall is to philosophizing about the meaning of life to the litany of historical evidence pointing to failures of the patriarchy. The final lines reveal that someone else has been in the room the whole time and should be taken as confirmation of much of the critique which has preceded the unexpectedly inappropriate revelation of the true character of the mark on the wall.
