[2] In a letter written to a friend in 1961, Marlen describes the difficulty with its composition:[2] I am writing on my novel and everything is very cumbersome because I never have much time and, mainly, because I can not embarrass myself.
They plan on staying in a hunting lodge for the weekend, but the next morning the woman finds herself alone with her cousins' dog, Luchs.
The woman leaves to look for the couple but soon discovers why they did not come back: a seemingly endless, invisible wall separates her from the other side of the valley.
Because the area in which she is trapped is fairly wide, she learns to live off her supplies, the fruits and animals of the surrounding forest, and her garden.
In one, the book can be understood as fairly radical criticism of modern civilization: the protagonist is forced to return to a more natural way of life, showing how useless cultural goods become in situations such as the one described in the novel and how life in the city makes people "unfit for living in harmony with nature.
"[3] For example, the Mercedes-Benz automobile in which she arrived slowly becomes overgrown by plants, and the "wall" seems to protect her, giving her the opportunity to change and rethink her priorities.
[4] The novel is also described as a twentieth century Entwicklungsroman, which explores the "psychological, rather than social-historic, aspects of the heroine's maturation process.
It is not often that you can say only a woman could have written this book, but women in particular will understand the heroine's loving devotion to the details of making a keeping life, every day felt as a victory against everything that would like to undermine and destroy.
"[7] Critic Maria-Regina Kecht considers Haushofer, along with Ingeborg Bachmann, to be a forerunner for a generation of German-language women writers including Elfriede Jelinek, Barbara Frischmuth, and others.
[8] The novel has influenced authors like Elfriede Jelinek, who dedicated one of her Princess Plays to Haushofer, citing The Wall specifically.
[11] Bennett herself has described in an interview being drawn to Haushofer, among other writers, and she later wrote an afterword to the New Directions edition of The Wall that was published in 2022.