Voicesyesvoices

  Both Kew Gardens and the Mark on the Wall are told around a snail or at least have a snail as one important anchor of their storytelling. I wonder if Woolf did that on purpose; and whether it is possible for us to consider the change of the snail as the change of Woolf herself or the style of her writing.   The role of the two snails might be similar, but they fulfill this role in different ways. In Kew Gardens, the snail has an external, worldly, and real existence. From its first appearance on stage, the reader knows the snail as the snail. Its external, worldly, and real existence is its identity—identity to itself, to the narrator, and to the readers. What is more, this snail has an actual movement. This movement is not only spatial but also chronological. One might even say that it is the chronological movement of the snail that gives the rest of the story—both the other characters and events—a chronological order, a sense of time. The snail carries with it the en...