“I’d spent most of my life struggling with daily human concerns. (…) Since my childhood I had forgotten how to see things with my own eyes (…); loneliness led me, in moments free of memory and consciousness, to see the brilliance of life again. (…) I don’t know whether I will be able to bear living with reality alone. (…) I’m still a human being who thinks and feels. (…) That’s why I am sitting here writing down everything that’s happened (…). Writing is all that matters, and as there are no other conversations left, I have to keep the endless conversation with myself alive.”
Published in 1963, The Wall by the Austrian writer, Marlen Haushofer (born in 1920) is an absorbing, contemplative, nuanced and compelling dystopian novel focusing on the meaning of freedom, solitude, written word, one’s connection to the natural world and animals, memory, the power of nature, survival, the value of menial work, one’s compulsion to understand the world, the position of women in the society and their freedom to live according to their own norms outside of the widely accepted social structures, and on the women experiencing solitude without judgement. There is a peaceful quality about this novel defined by the spareness of its narrative and a sense of occhiolism. Writing feels very modern, with unemotional descriptions of all day long menial tasks.
Reading The Wall, we must remember that the novel was written during the Cold War and there are some shadows of that period within the text pointing out to the concerns of those times, but it is never explicitly mentioned:
“At the time everyone was talking about nuclear wars and their consequences.”
Despite that this narrative has a sense of universality.
It is worth mentioning a few words about Haushofer who was a stay-at-home housewife who disliked public engagements and suffered from frequent bouts of depression as well as numerous health issues throughout her life. From various articles about her life, one gets an impression that she was not a very fulfilled person. Writing to her seemed like an arduous and straining task. She often wrote during her free time when not caring for her children and house. She did not participate in the literary events in Vienna. Haushofer died at the age of 49 in 1969 but her popularity was not very long lived. Most neighbours of hers were not aware that she was a respected writer at the time of her death.
The Wall invites a symbolic interpretation – in some sense it is easier to say what the novel is not rather than what the novel is.
The Wall is a story of an unnamed woman in her 40s who finds herself cut off from the rest of the world by the sudden appearance of the wall made of unknow material that separates a part of the forest from the rest of the world. This occurrence takes place during the narrator’s visit to her cousin, Luise’s and her husband, Hugo’s lodge in the Austrian Alps. She was unable to find an explanation for the appearance of the wall and was not sure if only the valley or the whole country had been affected by this disaster. Thanks to Hugo the narrator had provisions that would keep her through some time, and a lifetime’s supply of wood. that allowed her to survive. She also had their dog, Lynx who became an integral part of her new life along with two cats and the cow. They became her new family. At the time when the wall appeared the narrator was widowed for two years, and her two daughters were almost grown up.
The appearance of the wall forced the narrator to immediately accept her new reality allowing her to move away from the known social structures. It was not only a physical object but also a psychological frontier. It erased her previous life. Once the wall appeared she immediately built home with her animals, her life was ruled by care for them and governed by the seasons, harvests, she did not have to rush anywhere.
“We were both [Lynx, the dog] afraid, trying to give each other courage. (…) I knew I had to survive it, and that I had no means of escape. (…) It wasn’t the first day of my life that I had had to survive like this.”
At the time we meet her she has been trapped in the current situation for over two years. She decided to write the report as writing was the only thing still connecting her to shared humanity allowing her to keep an endless conversation with herself as there was no one else to have the conversation with. Writing provided her with the possibility of the connection with another person who might read her report in the future. Out of fear of plunging into the abyss of emptiness the narrator started writing her report about the experiences of the previous two years. From the perspective of these two years when she thought about the woman she once was before the wall entered her life, she did not recognise herself in her.
“I am not writing for the sheer joy of writing; so many things have happened to me that I must write if I am not to lose my reason. (…) I am quite alone, I must try to survive the long, dark winter months. I don’t expect these notebooks will ever be found. (….) I shall write until darkness falls, and this new, unfamiliar work should make my mind tired, empty and drowsy.”
“It was some comfort to me that the books must still exist (…). If I ever get out of here I shall lovingly and longingly caress every book I find….”
In her report the narrator shared her thoughts on daily tasks she had to undertake in order for her and her animals to survive – descriptions are very detailed but not overwhelming. She has been going through a period of depression and illness, her inability to work, in some sense she has been trying to force herself to develop an emotional resistance to companionship or rather the absence of companionship. There are many reflections on the danger of emotional attachments, the sense of purpose once one’s children grow up, the meaning of motherhood and womanhood not connected to being a mother or a wife.
The wall was a sort of a physical prison of liberation that forced the narrator into a new reality free of social constraints. Over the time she realised that she was not free in her previous life before the appearance of the wall. She noted:
“External freedom has probably never existed, but neither have I ever known anyone who knew inner freedom.”
The narrator thought about her former life and found it unsatisfactory in all respects. She had achieved little that she had wanted and everything she had achieved she had ceased to want in her current circumstances.
“Sometimes I became quite clearly aware of my predicament, and to the demands of that world, but I wasn’t capable of breaking out of the stupid way of life. (…) I was probably able to live only because I could always escape into family life. In the last few years, in any case, it often seemed to me as if the people closest to me had gone over to the enemy side, and life became really grey and gloomy. Here, in the forest, I am actually in the right place for me.”
Throughout her experiences living within the wall, she became deeply aware of her mortality:
“I know too that I will have to die someday.”
Her perception of time has also changed due to her new circumstances:
“I did not enjoy being a servant of time, artificial human time, dissected by the ticking of clocks, and that often-caused difficulties for me.”
During these two years she realised that she preferred to be alone, felt comfortable with the absence of others. She noted:
“If Hugo and Luise had stayed behind in the forest there would certainly have been endless friction as time passed. I can’t see anything that could have made our coexistence a happy one.”
As the time progressed the narrator realised that the appearance of the wall constituted a part of the enormous catastrophe – everything pointed to the absence of resources and the silence of human voices on the radio. She thought about her children as little kids, who became:
“two rather unpleasant, loveless and argumentative semi-adults that I had left behind in the city (…). I never mourned for them, only ever for the children that they had been man years before. That probably sounds cruel, but I can’t think who I should lie to today. I can allow myself to write the truth.”
Her children turned into strangers. She remembered her time around the children – she admits that the older they became the more unhappy she was. She understood that “all the people for whom [she] has lied throughout [her] life are dead.” She could now be honest with herself.
“The circumstances of my former life had often forced me to lie; but now every occasion and every excuse for lies had disappeared. I wasn’t living among human beings any more, after all.”
During the times of severe anxiety and emotional numbness, the narrator considered ending her own life:
“I was no longer young enough to think seriously about suicide. It was chiefly thoughts about Lynx [the dog] and Bella [the cow] that kept me from it and also a certain curiosity.”
The importance of the routine in her life was significant. She was clinging to the meagre remnants of human routine left to her and has never abandoned certain habits. She washed herself daily, brushed her teeth, did her laundry. She was afraid if she could do otherwise, she would gradually cease to be a human being.
“(…) this familiar ordinariness was what I needed to live, if I wanted to stay a human being.”
She realised that she had not written her name since the appearance of the wall, she almost forgot her name. Noone called her by her name so to her it no longer existed, Also, her voice sounded strange and unreal as a result of no one being around to speak to. This indicated to the artificiality or superficiality of our names, the sound of our voices – this did not make us human. Since living in the forest, she stopped seeing herself getting older as there was no one telling her how she looked.
She realised that the composure with which she adapted to her situation from the first day had only been a kind of anaesthetic. She made things worse for herself by so stubbornly refusing to examine the past.
“I’m afraid that much that I remember will be different from my real experiences.”
She was sitting in the forest, alone with the dog, the cow and the cat and realised that she does not have any of the things that made up her life for the previous forty years:
“I thought about the dead, and I was very sorry for them, not because they were dead, but because they had all found so little joy in life.”
Since living in the forest her health has improved despite the fact, she was often tired because of work in the field or forest. Before that she had been susceptible to colds and now, she did not have migraines nor colds. She discovered how many things she could do with her hands – they were her tools to survival, and she found new appreciation for her menial work.
Responsibility for her animals forced her to do the necessary things. Her animals were entirely dependent on her. To have the dog with her was a great source of comfort to her. Lynx was the closest to her, he was her friend, her only friend in the world of loneliness. She did not feel entirely lost as there were two of them: her and Lynx. Bella, the cow became also very close to her. The animals were all she had, she felt like the head of a family unit. After the death of Pearl, the cat and Lynx, she sometimes had a desire to go into the white and painless silence. She had to take care of herself and be stricter with herself than before. After Lynx’s death she felt like an amputee, she was truly alone. She dreamt only about the animals. The longer she lived in the forest, the less frequent her dreams about the people who once inhabited her life were. In her dreams the animals were always kind to her. She never dreams about the wall. The wall has become a part of her life to the extent that she did not think about it.
The random man who appeared suddenly and hurt her animals was the only violent occurrence she had experienced during her time in the forest:
“I had to be able to see everything and protect myself against attack. (…) I knew that all the measures I was taking were directed against human beings and they struck me as ridiculous. But since I had only ever been threatened by human beings before, I could not adapt too quickly, the only enemy I had ever encountered in my life so far had been man.”
The Wall is a compelling novel with the possibility for many interpretations. For me The Wall constitutes the allegorical tale on women experiencing solitude without judgement which seems possible only when the world comes to a standstill and there is no one there to judge them. Haushofer also offers an interesting perspective on the meaning of one’s existence:
“I pity animals, and I pity people because they’re thrown into this life without being consulted.”
There is a film that was made based on this book under the same title: The Wall from 2012 directed by Julian Polsler starring Martina Gedeck which I highly recommend.