In a diary entry written in 1920, Virginia Woolf imagines merging elements from her stories “Kew Gardens” and “The Mark on the Wall” in order to create a style that could apply to novels as well as short stories:

When considering the combination of “The Mark on the Wall” and “Kew Gardens” Woolf invokes the image of a structure without scaffolding or barriers. She associates her chosen style with “looseness, lightness,” while the images of “crepuscular” darkness and “mist” suggest an indeterminate environment with imperceptible limits. Notably, she describes the need to enclose her subject without restricting it, to create a metaphorical wall with “scarcely a brick to be seen.” This essay examines how “The Mark on the Wall” and “Kew Gardens” depict this notion of a surrounding, yet porous boundary, and asks how this concept came to be reflected in the production and presentation of the texts themselves.

“The Mark on the Wall” was the first work that Woolf published with the newly established Hogarth Press. Rather than featuring a traditional plot, it constitutes a meditation on the perception of objects and the nature of knowledge. At the start of the text the narrator notices a mark on the wall above the mantelpiece and questions what it might be. They imagine it is “a nail, a rose leaf, [or] a crack in the wood,” (82) and as they weigh up each likelihood their mind wanders through various thoughts and ideas. Finally, after having considered a great number of possibilities and their implications, they realize that the mark is a snail. The structure of the work is formed around a single question and answer; the narrator poses a problem at the beginning of the text and by the end it is apparently resolved.