Theories On Time: Einstein Vs. Viriginia Woolf

What is time? According to Webster's Dictionary, time is a nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future. There are two distinct views on what time really is. One view is that time is linear and part of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence, and time itself is something that can be measured. The other is that time is part of the fundamental intellectual structure along with space and number in which events are sequenced by their duration and the intervals between them. In this view, time does not represent a flow of events that objects move through. In this research paper I will discuss the differences and similarities in the narrator's views on time with Einstein's.

In Virginia Woolf's short story, "The Mark on the Wall", the narrator's memory constantly shifts back and forth between the past and present. She observes past events like the election of high and present events like the war. This occurs when she tries to figure out what a mysterious mark on the wall is. Throughout the story she remains seated by a window. She refuses to get up and look at the mark because she felt as if it would take away the mystery of the mark. Then at the end when she's thinking about the war that's going on, she realized that the mark isn't a nail or reflection of light but a snail.

"Oh! dear me, the mystery of life! The inaccuracy of thought! The ignorance of humanity! To show how very little control of our possessions we have--what an accidental affair this living is after all our civilization--let me just count over a few of the things lost in one lifetime, beginning, for that seems always the most mysterious of losses I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle." (Woolf, 3).

In Woolf's view, the traditional narrative form cannot do justice to the tumultuous randomness of life. Her most defiant act against the overdone forms of writing is perhaps her treatment of time. Woolf rejects a conventional view of time, in which time is neatly divided between the past, present, and future. "Woolf undertakes the transmutation of a new artistic form, the desire to turn fiction into a time/perspective oriented structure through a motif of light and relativity." (Narey, 2). Woolf knew the difficulties she faced in transcending the former ways of seeing time and space. Her art separates itself from other fiction tales in which time passes equally for all characters. Rather than an orderly sequence of events, Woolf advocates a form of narrative that consists of a series of brief impressions, unfinished vignettes, unfolding in random order, unrelated to one another, and of no particular consequence in themselves. "With the Mark on the Wall, Woolf offers an artistic manifesto of an emerging concept of time and perspective, a manifesto, in this story at least, perhaps influenced by the theories of Albert Einstein and his new view of the universe." (Narey, 2).

"No, no, nothing is proved, nothing is known. And if I were to get up at this very moment and ascertain that the mark on the wall is really--what shall we say?--the head of a gigantic old nail, driven in two hundred years ago, which has now, owing to the patient attrition of many generations of housemaids, revealed its head above the coat of paint, and is taking its first view of modern life in the sight of a white-walled fire-lit room, what should I gain?-- Knowledge? Matter for further speculation?" (Woolf, 2).

Albert Einstein believed in the consequences of special relativity. In his paper, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" he puts together James Clerk Maxwell's equations for electricity and magnetism with the laws of mechanics, which introduced new changes to mechanics of the speed of light. The papers ... "altered past perceptions of time and space." (Narey, 1). It introduced a theory of time, distance, mass, and energy that was consistent with electromagnetism, but omitted the force of gravity. This paper would later be known as Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity.

This classic principle of relativity states that the laws of physics remain the same for any non accelerating frame of reference called an inertial reference frame, to the laws of electrodynamics and optics as well as mechanics. Einstein proposes that the speed of light remain constant in all inertial frames of reference,