Monday or Tuesday
Virginia Woolf
Contains spoilers for the entire book.
Discussion topics
Topic 01 of 08
A welcoming haunting
How does “A Haunted House” reshape what you expect from a ghost story?
Keep the conversation going
- What do the couple’s memories make the house mean to its living occupants?
- How did the final discovery of the treasure change the earlier search for you?
There is no single right answer. Bring your own reading.
Discussion topics
How does “A Haunted House” reshape what you expect from a ghost story?
Keep the conversation going
- What do the couple’s memories make the house mean to its living occupants?
- How did the final discovery of the treasure change the earlier search for you?
How does the women’s investigation in “A Society” change what counts as an achievement worth admiring?
Keep the conversation going
- What happens when praise of books, scholarship, and invention meets the reports of poverty and war?
- How do you read Ann’s tears when she is made president of the society of the future?
What does the ending of “An Unwritten Novel” suggest about the desire to turn a stranger into a story?
Keep the conversation going
- Where does the narrator’s sympathy seem to open possibilities, and where might it confine the woman?
- What do you make of the narrator’s renewed delight after the imagined life falls apart?
What did “Monday or Tuesday” and “Blue & Green” offer you through their shifting images rather than a continuous plot?
Keep the conversation going
- How does the repeated search for truth in the title piece relate to the heron’s indifferent movements?
- What changes when you follow the colours in “Blue & Green” without trying to turn them into a single scene?
How does “The String Quartet” convey the experience of listening to music?
Keep the conversation going
- What do the interruptions of ordinary conversation add to the imagined rivers, lovers, and city?
- How do you understand the desire to return to the street near the end of the performance?
How does the snail’s journey change the importance of the human encounters in “Kew Gardens”?
Keep the conversation going
- What do Simon’s and Eleanor’s different memories suggest about the private lives within a shared walk?
- How does the final mingling of voices, flowers, heat, and city noise affect your sense of where the story’s centre lies?
What kind of ending does the discovery of the snail in “The Mark on the Wall” provide for the whole collection?
Keep the conversation going
- How does the mention of the war interrupt the narrator’s search for a quiet space to think?
- After the mark is identified, what value do you find in the thoughts that grew from not knowing what it was?
Reading the eight pieces together, what links them, and which one would you give to someone new to Woolf?
Keep the conversation going
- How did the collection change your idea of what a short story can be?
- Which piece did you want to read a second time, and why?
There is no single right answer. Bring your own reading.