The Symbol by Virginia Woolf
"The Symbol" by Virginia Woolf is a reflective short story centered around an elderly English woman who observes a mountain from her hotel balcony in an alpine village. The mountain serves as a profound symbol throughout the narrative, representing both the beauty and the peril of life. The story unfolds as the woman writes a letter to her sister, contemplating the mountain's significance and its connection to memories of her family, including her dying mother and adventurous relatives.
Woolf employs an omniscient narrator to highlight the theatricality of life at the resort, suggesting a sense of artificiality in the human experience. As the woman reflects on the mountain, she grapples with themes of mortality, freedom, and the fleeting nature of existence. The narrative takes a tragic turn when young men, who are climbing the mountain, disappear while crossing a crevasse, leading to a poignant conclusion about the quest for understanding in the face of suffering. The story poignantly ends with the woman’s unfinished letter, underscoring the themes of loss and the limitations of language to convey deep emotional truths.
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The Symbol by Virginia Woolf
First published: 1985
Type of plot: Sketch
Time of work: The late nineteenth or early twentieth century
Locale: An alpine resort, possibly in Switzerland
Principal Character:
The narrator , an elderly English woman
The Story
This brief story begins with a description of the mountain, the focal point of the alpine village in which the story is set. The mountaintop is like a crater on the moon, filled with iridescent snow whose color changes from dead white to blood red. The mountainside is a vast descent from pure rock and a clutching pine to the village and graves in the valley.
An elderly English woman sits on her hotel room balcony. She starts to write to her sister in England that the mountain "is a symbol," but she pauses to observe the mountain, as if to think about its symbolic significance. While the woman is musing, the omniscient narrator comments on the theatrical nature of the alpine resort: The hotel balcony is like a box at a theater and human behavior appears as "curtain raisers." From this omniscient perspective, life looks artificial and temporary: "Entertainments to pass the time; seldom leading to any conclusion." When the English woman sees young men on the street below, she recognizes one of them as a relative of the mistress of her daughter's school. She remembers that young men in the past have died climbing the nearby mountain and becomes again mindful of its symbolic presence and power.
Continuing her letter to her sister, the woman recalls the time that she spent with their dying mother on the Isle of Wight. This remembrance stirs her to disclose that she longed to hear the doctor say that her mother would die soon, when in fact she lived another eighteen months. She writes that she regarded the mother's death as a symbol—a symbol of freedom. She goes on to say that "a cloud then would do instead of the mountain" as a sign of having reached the top. Her memory then turns to her Anglo-Indian uncles and cousins who were explorers, and she reveals her own great desire to explore, though marrying was a more sensible choice.
After turning her attention to a woman routinely shaking out a rug on another balcony, the woman resumes her letter to her sister. After mentioning the local villas, food, and hotel, she returns to the subject of the mountain and what a splendid view she has of it, as well as of everyone else in the village. She says that the mountain is always the center of conversation; people discuss whether it is clear and seems close, or it looks like a cloud and seems farther away.
Just the night before, she confesses, she hoped the storm would hide the mountain, and then asks if she is being selfish to want it concealed in the face of so much suffering. Admitting that this suffering afflicts visitors and native residents equally, she quotes the hotel proprietor as saying that only an earthquake could destroy the mountain and that no such threat exists there.
The woman again notices the young men, who are now roped together and climbing the mountain; she stops her letter midsentence: "They are now crossing a crevasse." The pen falls from her hand as the men disappear.
Later that night the men's bodies are uncovered by a search party. The story ends with the woman finding her unfinished letter and writing that the old clichés seem appropriate: The men tried "to climb the mountain"; peasants put flowers on their graves; and the young men have "died in an attempt to discover . . . " Because no conclusion seems fitting, the woman tacks on the conventional line, "Love to the children" and signs her pet name, closing the letter and the story.