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Literary Devices
Definition of Allusion
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals, historical events, or philosophical ideas... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to... read full definition
Allusions
Explanation and Analysis—Shattered Mirror:
In "The Mark on the Wall," Woolf dwells at length on the marked difference between self-perception and perception by another, utilizing the image of a mirror. In this passage, Woolf alludes to Alfred, Lord Tennyson's famous lyrical poem, "The Lady of Shalott":
Suppose the looking glass smashes, the image disappears, and the romantic figure with the green of forest depths all about it is there no longer, but only that shell of a person which is seen by other people - what an airless shallow, bald, prominent world it becomes! A world not to be lived in.
Tennyson's poem tells the story of a young woman, cursed to only view the outside world as a reflection in a mirror. The Lady of Shalott eventually defies the curse, desperate to see the "romantic figure" of Sir Lancelot with her own eyes. The mirror shatters as a consequence of her defiance, after which the Lady of Shalott dies.
This passage illuminates Woolf's perspective on the meaning of life and the importance of one's self-image. Woolf and her narrator argue that, contrary to the Lady of Shalott's experience, the image one has of oneself is a crucial part of personal identity. Losing that image, a person can only be defined by the thoughts and opinions of others.
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Explanation and Analysis—Parcels and Asphodel:
More than once, Woolf alludes to or explicitly mentions prominent locations featured in Greek mythology. The underworld, or "Hades," is a site of particular fixation:
Why, if one wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it to . . . Tumbling head over heels in the asphodel meadows like brown paper parcels pitched down a shoot in the post office!
Woolf references the "asphodel meadows" (also called the "fields of asphodel")—a part of the underworld where ordinary souls (people who were neither exceptionally good nor exceptionally evil) are sent during the afterlife. This region of the underworld in Greek mythology is somewhat similar to purgatory—a place in-between, a land without extremes.
Combined with Woolf's use of simile, comparing people to brown paper parcels, her allusion to the asphodel meadows evokes inertia or stagnation, implying that people live in a perpetual state of indecision, allowing things to happen but never seizing control. Brown paper parcels have no agency; they are at the mercy of the postal service workers pitching them down the chute.
The existential dread—or nihilism—underlying Woolf's use of allusion and simile in this passage is not unique to her. Several other prominent Modernists, including T. S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats, dwelt on the problem of human inaction or moral passivity. These anxieties were born in large part from the tragic, large-scale loss of life during the first World War. Many people, including Woolf and other Modernists, saw it as a great failure of civilization and human morality that so many people were allowed to die for no apparent reason. With that context in mind, it makes sense that the narrator alludes to a purgatorial underworld where souls tumble randomly like parcels.
Related Themes:
