It Must Have Been Winter
The narrator struggles to fix the date in January when she noticed the mark on the wall by welling images capable of making the connection: “So now I think of the fire; the steady film of yellow light upon the page of my book; the three chrysanthemums in the round glass bowl on the mantelpiece.” The fire connotes the need for winter warmth; the yellow light is a visual indicator of the subtle changes in tone and hue of sunlight as the earth makes it way around the sun; the flowers seal the deal: chrysanthemums are late bloomers, usually not capable of being cut for display until late fall at the earliest.
Stream of Consciousness
The story is an example of the stream-of-consciousness technique, in which the writer attempts to present the world through the perspective of how the mind actually works by jumping from one thought to another in ways sometimes associated and sometimes not. Early on, Woolf allows her narrator to recognize the technique and comment upon it, presenting an image that exploits the connotation of “swarming” with the visual concept of ants engaged in a process of construction similar to the construction of her thoughts in that brief chronological moment in time which the story describes: “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.”
The Mark
The central imagery in the story is directed toward the titular blemish. The imagery is a strategic device utilized for the purpose of revealing the imagination and intellectual depths of the narrator; her rejection of patriarchal conventions and her intellectual exercises thus take on greater focus and set the stage for the story’s conclusion. The imagery starts from a purely utilitarian point: “The mark was a small round mark, black upon the white wall, about six or seven inches above the mantelpiece.” From there, the imagery of the mark grows increasingly metaphorical and philosophical, expanding within the consciousness of the narrator to become something worthy of using to contemplate history, art, sociology, and politics. All of these images make the mark something more than it is, as every flicking thought of the woman looking at it leads to the moment when the explanation she was trying so hard to avoid is provided for her, and the reality that it is a snail confirma the validity of her rejection of the patriarchy.
