The Symbol (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Virginia Woolf
- First Published: 1985
- Type of Plot: Sketch
- Time of Work: The late nineteenth or early twentieth century
- Setting: An alpine resort, possibly in Switzerland
- Principal Characters: The narrator
- Genres: Short fiction, Sketch
- Subjects: Mothers, Parents and children, Nineteenth century, Europe or Europeans, Women, Death or dying, Switzerland or Swiss people, Alps, Mountains, Mountaineering
- Locales: Switzerland
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...
[The entire page is 1473 words long]
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