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the purpose of this study is to prove that the excellence of
litherine Hanefield'e short stories lies in her craftsmanship -
cratteaanship of for: and of matter.

In 6&5.“me 0? FOR}; I have shown that the author has attained
that excellence through a skillful adoption of the following unttadi-
tional techniques: scorn of plot and climax, economy of uord and phrase,
and elements of other literary form - essay, biography, drum, and
lyric poetry. I have shown, too. that the com;loto treedon in form of
her short stories enabled Kiss lansfiold to tell her truth with greater
clarity end finer intensity tlu‘ouch a subtle and two-fold method of
presentation: revelation of character and intensification of emotion or
nod.

In CRAFTSL‘LHSIIIP 0F liAT‘ILR I luvs proved how the author schimd
her rare mastery of material by s skillful handling of various and
subtle techniques to produce revolution of character and intensifica-
tion of emotion or mood, both of which were greatly enhanced by vies
Hansficld's own keen perceptive powers. First, I have analysed the
techniques which she used to produce revelation of characters
subfieetivity, impressionism, exaggeration, symbolism, and sensibility.
Next, I have analysed the techniques she used to secure intensification
of emotion or needs imagery, characterisation, sensibility, symbolism,

and implication.

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Part1

mains MANSFIELD
Intro duction

the inclusion of Iatherine Iansfield's biography seems a fitting
introduction to a study of her short stories, for much of her notable
work grew out of her own experience. It was a brief life in which she
delighted greatly and suffered greatly. Thus her stories are likewise
necked with sun and shadow. I have presented the various phases of
her life which seemed most significant to the author and her works:
childhood in Karori, which was the source of some of her finest work,
the How haland stories; Gwen's College days and literary beginnings;
unfortunate years in London, many of which came about as a sad conse-
quence of her can rebellious spirit and mature Judgment; oonvalescenoe
in Bavaria, resulting in her first book of short stories; literary
apprenticeship; influence of her brother's death in World War I, as the
turning-point in her career, resulting in her New Zealand stories)
retirement to GurdJeff for spiritual regeneration and supreme objecti-
vity; and finally, her death from tuberculosis.

The young author's childhood in How Zealand played a definite part
in her literary career. Although she was quite unaware of its ultimate
meaning until years afterward, it was her own native island, her own
family circle, her own big, white house in Xarori which was to emerge in
reminiscence and tales form in her New Zealand stories.

Katherine Mansfield (Kathleen Beauchsmp) had been told countless
tines by her grandmother of her stormy entrance into the world. It was
'the memorable night of the "southerly buster" in Wellington, New Zealand,

October 1‘, 1888. The greater part of her childhood, however, was spent

 

 

 

in the small township of i-arcri near Wellington in a big, white house

with well kept grounds, a house with a narrow-pillared veranda far
back fro': the road, and with a garden slaying in terracus down to a
stone wall covered with nasturtiwns. it was indeed this very house
and its spacious grounds which years later were to form the setting of
'Ths Garden Party," one of the author's most famous stories.

In the little township school intuorine shared what education there
was with the baiocr's and tho msherwonan'e children, a social situation
which her upper middle-class parents do;.1:red, but which ultimately
resulted in I'l'ho Doll's Hence,“ one of tho .mst poignant tales of the
author. She was not a happy or tranquil little girl, but needy and
secretive, rather and "was over 'chs' tno odd one"1 in a fauily of faur
sisters and one brotzwr. mcaueo size was idle in school her family
thought she was slow and lasy - not quick-ao‘ittod like her sisters.
”However, the author herself Ema left it on record that she had her first
story accepted at the age of nine, and that at tho sane age she gained
the first _=risc for an 4.1,;11321 con,ooition at the village school, the
subject being '1; Sea Voyago'"2 Yot’orinc had been her grudsother's
child from the moment the old woman had assisted at her birth on that
memorable, stem night. Indeed Dar-,tarot Eiansfield Dyer was not only
her grandparent but s; iritual godmother as well. So it was no small
under that the author cans to use her cranctaothsr's name as her non do
plume.

After Ilarori township school cane hellington girls' college. Int

1 Ruth Elvis}: Zlants and J. .‘éiddlcton Hurry, The Life of Katherine
liensi‘iold (London, 1953), p. 37.

2 Short Stories of Katherine Elansfiold. Introduction by J.
Middlefin My (m York, 1MB}, 9. v.

 

 

 

 

 

new Iatheriu's interest shifted from writing to music, undoubtedly

hum. 01’ hr mils idealisation of one Arnold ‘l'roweil, yew cell-
ist. Ills threw all of her suppressed arder into learning to ,‘lay, and
indeed he. a proficient cellist herself. In January, 1903, Katherine
us sent b tendon to complete her education, so it was at men's
“liege M Iatbrine's literary beginnings were launched as editor of
Dr edieel mine. rhus she turned to writing. She always felt
impelled to give expression to the peculiar note which lite sounded for
bf, and his): in her belief did not sound Just thus for any one else.
As editor of her college magazine, she contributed sketches of her
diildhosd in he Iceland, from 1903. to 1905, and encouragement which
she received there launched her definitely u‘en her career as a vex-items
an: wash of her tins was spent in solitary day-drowning, according to
the you; writer herself:

I gathered and gathered and hid away for that long

winter when I should rediscover all this treasure - and if

anyone else should com close, I scuttled up the tallest,

darkest tree and hid in the tzvrtamohaos.‘1

Three years later, in June, 1906, with life at Queen's College at
an end, she reharned to New Zealcnd. The family had moved to a big
house in wellington, for her father had achieved national recognition
and comreial success now. an; elevation of the family's position did
not sonpensate for Iandon, Katherine 's college friends, her literatm,
art, amsie. Utterly miserable, she quite frankly expressed her here-

dom with New zealand'c grovinoiaiicn. 0f the superficialities of social

3 Ruth Elvish "anti, critical mbliocraghz or Katherine Mansfield
(lenden, 1931), p. 1.6.

‘ Journal of Katherine Mansfield. Edited by J. Middleton flurry (new
York, , pp. .

 

life she serial-d "I hate society: there's so much hypocrisy in

“I“. - a opinion diich persisted Mutant her brief lite.

Yet in spite of her unhappiness Katherine continued to write,
finally “hitting for pnhlication sole of her sketches of Ice Zealand
life. II October. 1907, the lative (lamina, an Australian nagasins,
prinhd fires or her clutches, but the editor had witten her on receipt
e: his cont-imam: expressing doubt that work of such quality could he
fin orifllal Ink of en eighteen year old girl. But she answered hie
inst 'Viyssteee' eers original and added, moreover: "Please do not use
the nus of km lhnsficld Beauohuip, I an anxious to he read only
as l’atherins emu-um or 1:. mu“ m. mks on. adoption or her non
do plus, but «tinny it was not until she was writing for the he go
in 1910 that she refined to it. That cho should sent to use her adored
Miller‘s naiden name or lanei‘iold seemed altogether natural. She
had tied several experiments , first ”Julian Ibrk,‘ in the rhythn of
Dorian Gray. then 'I'athe cementum." 'Kathorina," and in 1915 signed
her stories "fluids lorry" in the three timbers of The Signature pro-
duosd by lathsrins Insfiold, J. Middleton Murry, and D. H. Laurence.
But morally all other pseudonyms were discarded.

fitting at its wrote satisfied her. Ideas she had in abundance
out she seemed to have no grip on any subject. ”more was laughter at
hoes greeting her announcement. 'I'n going to be a writer” It one acre
flan halt due to her challenging assure. less than half because she
didn't look to part, and because she had been 'Just Kass' to he. for
so low." She continua to rebel against her colonial surroundings and

5 We and Entry, cg. cit" p. 840
‘ his, cg. oi!” p. 16.
7 his and Harry. cg. cit” p. 348.

 

 

begged her tafiner's permission to go to London to write. “Living; to

her meat refining to lcndon. "to ‘rite the word makes me feel that
I could bwst into tears. Isn't it terrible to low anything so much?
1 do not care .1; .11 tor men. but Iondon 1. Lifel"8 Ai‘ter some hesi-

tation her fewer pee her a small allowance and let her return to
tendon. It In July, 1908, and Katherine us Just twenty when she left
In baland . never to NM.

M no! the young writer entered into a most unfortunate phase of
her life, which came about as a sad result of her own rebellious nature
and imture Judpmt. and she never recovered from the anguish of those
years.

Her tatbr had found for her in London a kind of hostel for
married buincu eomon. 3:! c strange coincidence unhioh decided that
she should Look out from her room in Queen‘s College uyon Mansfield Elem,
the nun of the hostel was bauchnmp Lodge. But Katherine's mnorioe of
the lodge were sleeve degreesing. She was to receive an allowance of a.
hundred pounds a year, paid monthly through the London manager of the

he]: or New Zealand.
Now that she one in London she lost no time in renewing relations

with the musical Iroeell family of Wellington, living in Carlton Hill.
St. John's Wood. She accepted an invitation to stay with them for some
time. But it was not long before she realised her great affection for
Arnold had been idealised through separation only. Ber affections were
banererred to Arnold's brother, but troy so seemed to stem less from

love than the desire to be in love. She was back at Beauchemp Lodge,

° Andre lhurcie, 2:th012. and Poets (New York, 1935), p. 321.

..

 

 

however, by the end of Beirut-y, very miserable. “Somewhere about that

tins bin; in straits for mney she sold her cello for two ;.cunds. it
is difficult not to believe that this sac not expressive of a farewell
b music." Recognition did not com as quickly as her youthful heart
had dressed. Her stories were regularly rejected. And the only parts
she could get in travelling opera oomanios and the cinema were small.
The young author's meonventionol philcoo;-hy of life caused her
so. vsry unfortunate engerlenoes, the ezyuieh from which she never
recovered. A devotee of Oscar Wilde since her gueen's College days,
Katherine had extracted from reading him a dangerous doctrine concom-
in; the artist's duty to eneriencc - that of sacrificing; her yerson to
enrich her art. later she regretted it, admitting: "It hadn't all been
experience...thore was caste, destruction too..."10 It was her belief
that she wuld marry a sun with no prejudices, who would not only pro-
tect her but respect her right to live her life as an untrumelled
artist. So she married George Bordon, a music teacher, found him absurd
and left him after a few days. Then followed extrmc loneliness and
depression. "‘I felt rather like a fri,,htened child lost in a funeral

"11 she confessed. Her health was poor, she had no real

precession,
hens, and she was expecting a child who was not her husband's. Her
mother came to lenden to see her wayward daughter, but the two never
really understood each other and it was decided that Katherine should
be dispatched to Germany.

And new followed the meet uuhawy period of the young; author's

. but. ma my. Gas 01%., De 317s
1° hul'ois, cg. cit., p. 522.

11 92. cit” p. 322.

 

 

 

life, her experiences in Bavaria, which ultimately resulted in her

first collection of short stories In a German Fonsicn. Katherine was

 

sent to the little hvarian village of loerishefen shere she lodged
with the postnistress, who use kind to her. She ate at a pension where
she cue to has various types of German people when she later used as
characters in her first book. mt soon she becane seriously ill. Her
child was born dead and her own life one in Jeopardy. Unfortunately,
the details of her long convalescence in Bavaria are not known, for the
author ruthlessly destroyed all record of the time between her return
hone from Raw Zealand to ingland in 1909 and 1914, except the following

frapent thich is all that remains of her huge complaining diaries. It

belongs to that most unhappy tine of her life in Bavaria:

June, 1910...tc be alone all day in a house chose very
sound scene foreign to you, and to feel a terrible confusion
in your body which affects you mentally, suddenly pictures
for you detestable incidents, revolving personalities ahich

you only shah off to find recurring again as the pain seems
to grow sores...ilasl I shall not walk with bare feet in wild

seeds again. lot until I have grown accustomed to the climate
...the only adorable thing I can imagine is for my Grandmother
to put me to bed and bring me in a bowl of hot bread and
milk...and say in her adorable voice, 'Thore, darling, isn't
that nice“ Oh, what a miracle of happiness that would be...
Ales!)-2

The rest of Katherine Mansfield's life - a bare eleven years - is

recorded by her own hand in her Journal and letters, and what she was,

 

 

that she became, is told in these posthumous collections edited by her
husband, with far greater truth than any biographer could hope to achieve.

Virginia Woolf called the Journal a "mystical companion,“ so highly por-

 

ceptive that the discriminating reader is made to feel that he is not

reading a book but actually I'watchinf; a nind.‘13 Her letters Van Wyck

 

12 Journal, pp. 1-2.

13 ”Journal of Katherine liensfield," Nation (londcn), XLI (September
10. 1921), p. 750.

 

W
i
7
,
_

 

 

 

Moles believes to be 'extraordinary' and "

a-song the best that have
appeared in recent yearn"14 while Mr. Harper

places Miss Hansfie ld 's

letters on a par with those of Coleridge and Lamb, and even considers

her I'znore natural and urn-estrained.“ls

Her first collection of short stories In a German Pension

, which
M
one out in 1911, had formerly eggcarod as separate sketches in The

Sew 5:, a lendcn geriodioal. The tales reflect her youthful bitterness
in a somewhat crude cynicim.

painted

"711th highly Anglo Saxon strokes she
a carioatured, unpleasant Gamay, a mixture of sentimentality

ad gusslinc, pride and poverty.“6 1111:210th giving no giro-also of

great talent, the work had m undeniably fresh, defiant note in it.

fleeting with considerable success, the bool:
editions.

passed quickly into three

Eat the publishers went bankrupt and the author received

fifteen pounds in advance of royalties - of which there were none!

an: the young author was not very much disappointed, for she

quickly became indifferent to the book; then hostile. At the outbreak

of the First World War in 1314, gu‘uliahers made her attractive offers
for the right of re-publishing, but 5110 alum's refused, although she
Ml? needed money. She refused at a time, too, when the book might

have had phenomenal sale because of the strong; antioGsrman feeling.

"hit nothing would induce her to mine five hundred pounds by re-

Publishing In a German Pensionfl" She refused first because she was
M

afraid fine book's cynicism might increase the odium against Germany,

later, because it seemed too imatu; ». She would always reply: "th

 

1‘ "A Story-Teller's letters," Outlook, GL1 (February 29, 1929), p. 311.
15 Literary Aazrcciaticns (New York, 1937). pp. 227-235.
18

Introduction by J. Middleton Hurry

 

Mindset mtil I have a ed,- oi' wri; done and it can be see-1 in :‘or-
speetive. It is not true of me now...whon the time eo-xes for a collected
edificn...’ she would end latrglrdng."w Thus the collection remained out
of print during her lifetime, but a_,_oarod geothneusly as a rc-ri.1t E'y
Constable , landen, 1926, smile the first .‘uerioan edition has brought ..ut
by Knopf in January of the same year.

The can! year that her first heel; cam out, lf-ll, the youn_ author
rehrned to London. But before “.rsooodlzzg with her literary a. ,re.\.tloo-
ship in London, let us pause zuz‘ one: ‘..;:- three strikim gortralts of
Katherine Halsfiold. The first one '26 arm-.11 ‘ny her ooz‘.te:;_*orar~,', Fran};
Swimrton,'.n reminiscence of 1312:

I re--m‘eer coin; to tea to a not vur; c’werful flat in
Cheneery lane...“ that tl'xo Lamar-in. .Lanoi‘leld .uust have
been very young...an.l I found myself oxdxanted by a snail,
very slim, very dark ilrl who 3,le in a carefully
modulated murmur hardly gartln-L ”nor lies, as if she hu-xned
or intonod her nerds. She sat very still, sailing i'aintly
moth. bautlful idol-112:0 quiet-zoos of Ilat'Lerine Mansfield
made a great impression arson no as it always did...ehe was
one of the nest enchantlzk; young, mama I had over "not.”

To another of her centerlorarles, H. ’2. Tomlinsonc

ouhor beauty was attractive but also unearthly and a
little shilling line the ro.10to.xuss of Algine snow .....
hardly cerporeal...she gave the :l-ngreuel-m of being a
visitor who might name no her .lml to .-o at any moment
...and the regard of her 0368 was distinctly uncanny....
she did not seen to see your face, tut the back of your
mind...20

Yet no more human or revealing; likeness can be found myuhere than

that of a character slwtca tho yawn- author painted of herself:

1" lkneflold, rno _1._1_13t;1_o“mr1. Intro duetlou by Hurry (New York,
1924). i}. ix.

1'9 The Geor"ian Scene: A Literarg lanorama (New Yori, 19%),
pp. 24 .

2° "Contemporaries,” Nation (tendon), .u-LXII (June 20, 192:5), p.
809.

 

 

 

L:
u

 

 

 

fi

10

'Ycu he! I may ages: in confidence, 1 shall not be

fashionable leap"! like such awfully unfashionsble

things .. and people. 1 like sitting in doorsteps and

talking to the old man the brings quinces. And going

1hr picnics in a Jolting little won, and listening to

the kind of music they glay in gzu‘ollo sardons on warm

evenings. And talking to captains of shabby little

stemsre, ad. in fact, to all kinds of goo, 10...} am

not a high-bros. Sunday lunches and very intricate

conversations on sex mad that ‘fatl:uo'...t:loso things

I no. {remul'n in love with life, terribly...“

Refining tc landon wit:'.out health or money or influential friends
and with no assets but talent and _'ridc, tho young author lived alone
and continued writing, serving the next four years of ‘:.er literary
apgrenticsshig. It was December or the cane year that she first not
John Hiddletcn Hurry, kitiah author, than an Oxford undergraduate who
was conducting a literary gnriodicnl lax-(tin. lie invited her to write
stories for his magasine. It is said her first contribution ”The
lbnan at the Store' caused a minor sensation. Murry rented a room in
the small flat Ihere Batlzerine timlsi'lold was living. For a long *1“
fl”? M104 on separate lives. 3.11: in tin and they married. Within

‘ short the M was succeeded by The Blue Review to which Katherine

 

hoflold also contributed mtil its demise in 11-13. "Ho home could be
round for her short stories until the winter of 12-15322 Ill health

Ond ill success pursued her.

1"” next phase in tho author's life, the turning-point or her
om», aren- out 01' her brother's tragic death, and was the ultimate
result 01‘ some or her most significant work, her New haland stories,
”films" "M? the hy,‘ "The Voyage," "The Garden Party,“ and "The

0°11“ House.“

21 Letters, II, p. 420.

22 020 01‘s. p. ‘20.

 

 

In tin autumn of 1915, her only bruoher Leslie came 1...) visit ‘.or.

lie was on his my to the front, full of enthusiasm, sure or his ruturn.
the he spent long hours reminiscin," tot-c inner. Shortl; Il'tor her bran»:-
arrlved in “I'll. he was killed. Grief-atrium: our! ill, one dcillrtud
at once for hndcl en the Prowl; Hitler“. Row o‘au named to write of
hr native New haland. "'Cu :uiu'c' co :'..:;- “8.; brittht a flood of 01.3.3-
hcod memories which submerged all that Eula .---~.u ‘:.e:":rr: .--;.i c'mn‘od. .EUX'

n25

yhilesep..y of life and her litcrur.,- a.-_l"u.u:'. to trut... The 5-1-1115

writer confided to her Jour.:ull

 

lbw I want to write rucollwzims )1‘ a; “:1. country
till I singly exhaust "l; store. 'x'ot only because it is
a sacred debt that l -n;' t) con-Ax}, neon :se .1] brothur

v

and 1 were born there, but all.) wouuso in :11; than: hts l
range with him over all 1.1m ru- 1-) sot-m: Lac-36......z the

people we loved there...oi‘ than too 1 van-1t to writs...it

must be mysterious as though {'locti.l;_,...it .mst take the
beath...you have drained over the dassllnz: brim ol‘ the
world. lbw 1 must _'le; .1; rut.“

She bent every effort to carry 12.1% this sacred obligation to her

I

brother. But no words Oil-“VJ. :5 am just 5.11; ‘._-.-!eru :Ier Joel. start-.21.; at
the clean white jagcr. too-2‘ s _-l-.s..o-d r3 1.103.1{1 .l.~t..1:x;_, "'I'hol ouddaul;
as she had grayed it wall ;, (3le t. .o i'lo‘.....n i_;r:u_ of children clue
troeplng, Isabel, Lottie, 19:19....Iirlz‘. the birds ‘xl'_m:...1_jel:l£‘lnches.
fantails, limets...wlule hosts of .501': Lmland authorise. Thus was
started the long: short story 'x'rulude' but she could find no place for

n 25

it...ahove all, she must write the truth as she saw it. her truth

was based on actuality, )qu setting was none other than her own New

haland home, her characters, her own 1‘1»).in circle, her slight islet,

35 Lewis lbonnan, Tuberculosis and Genius (Chicago, 1940), p. 102.

2‘ cg. eit., pp. 45-44.
2" Marat nail. “In P-bmory 01' Katherine Mnnot‘leld," Boolcnan,
um (January, 19.58), pp. 36-46.

 

 

 

 

 

flfily happenings of an erdlzxar/ day.
Finally in 1913 'Prelude" was privately printed by the Hogarth irons.
Indeed it he one of the first publications of inonsri and Virginia Juli".
01' this first edition which consisted of about t-iroo hundred co,ies, John
Ilddletcn flirty reuarbds 'In its blue pug-or cover , with its maven _-ri:1t—
in and its wally paper, this volume was booo 1-.) on; of the greatest
rarities of modern book collectors."ac
flu author, herself, Elm/full; co unto”; on ”rubric" in her Letwrsx
I threw my darling to the uoolvus ml. t'uo,’ ate it and
served up so much praise in such 0. solder: bowl that I
couldn't help feeling; grateful; I All: not thin}. the] "OE-lid
like it at all. And 1 a. still fiflthm’lO. that the] do.
mlih the publisbrs, however, the critics 00m, 1.:tely ignored the
blue paper volume. Sbst of tho- new- 3130!? to which it me sent, did not
review it at all. Those which lid, sew nothing particular in it. "But
the young; author had her moment of triumph when she heard that the local
printer who set up the heel: had exclaimed in reading the manuscript, 'ity,
but these kids are reall’ It was e‘xmrncturistic of lzntherine fhlnsfield
to prefer the praise of tho uzliturury to tint of the cultured."28

strangely enough, the author herself had defiantly predicted

"Prelude 's" reception in her Letters:

 

Won't the Intellectuels just hate it. ghoy'll think its
a new primer for Infant Renders. Lot 'eml 9

It was not until the publication of Bliss, her second collection of short

 

stories two years later, that the ,roi‘oundly original quality of "Prelude"

was truly appreciated.

2° lhnts, 02. cit.. p. vii.
2' ut“7.. I, 1). 74s

28 Journal, op. cit., p. :1.
29 letters, I, p. 146.

 

 

 

 

 

;L

It was in the some war 01‘ o.) _.-.n'..l'.cu-.;LJ:-. of “.rulicu“ tat

lintherinc Ehnsi‘ield first lemma-i that 5.4; in; t..‘.;oro :l.-c:::. .. U. shu

Ins terrified. not so nuoh bum-:49; 51-5 1.1.1: :. v'.e'.;'.". c-i' ..‘--.:.- 2.15mi”, ".‘L-

,.
"nil

PULL]. 1". .lalmd. .'.'u;'.

lest she "die and leave sex-n.5, alts, 22.1.”.

as early as 1916, she buocmo .).:L:u!‘..'..". “:n- u. _1'.- . ::":15:: 5'. "-J-;Lt'.. .1»

hes but to glance through her bra-$1.212! ., - .' .‘r-; ‘1.- ;t .;-.'.i);; o." it:

 

u

‘r'u‘ny an I trouL-le': over; 5". i l.) ..-.. .. -'.'u mourn-2:5 .41
death and its inov'.tu'-.:llit_.-? . I .‘.. '. w: '12.: -v-::'.‘.. S‘Jitl'
shone through the \-"..‘..‘..3\ s, l
of all there was to So. 1-:‘.'I'. '.-1

:tn. , . 1' .' . -'. :' ""543,

But the £00113: than. ::‘.3 ‘ r5;- .:v:.- L.- t .-;r _'.-r 1.". 1.4: .-L:‘-:..
Some {more later tie frail _'f"‘:‘.‘|. a.:‘-.'.-::' .ucz. 1-,- s: 11.1.. ..-' '..'.: L.-

“l‘hs Daughters of two Let-J v“ '_. - u” .. :. .: .-.r. in: “.2 :':\..-'.. :2: \s::'-. .;o

for four :1" right; ‘uiora i...-..- ::-;:-r_- mm: 31.3; nu... .ner ”3.1433, she mu;

constantly shifting Fro . :‘u “1': u'. -.-..'. -‘zulhu 1.1‘. Zorn-.9 to 1dr: (rad

Paris an-f: reserto in " :‘.tz-.-'.'I...-.-... 5.- tx'l-u': .1 ars'z'rj ‘n ma, 5n.1'.tu'lt.,
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for lwnlt‘; I‘ll". 3:00.00 21 v.23 .. . w.‘ .. nth-“.1; Jztrg 1:: her «3'er 1111‘.

roads I

I 309:} to opou’. half of 1 liz'u srriv‘_'-. 2.x. strange
hetelfl.”"

It was not until ill-.2 a..:.... her hu: ..-.;x Duel-w J- itor or The ntho'mmn

 

that she Eugen to marl-Lu 1:. story uuoix math in that _'-.nl.lleutlou. Z-‘Luully

publishers b1;_,o.‘u to 9.3.. her to cell-Jot her txtorlcz, time Jlisc, her second

 

collection nigger-r1 1n .JIJO'=.:E or, C-L'U, bringing; her real rqutatlon. The

title story he.) formerly aL,_mnr-.u.. 1.1 1".0 ”.1. lis‘u iL‘fviOW. lt-n-oaliny her

W

natal tuzi: tang-Jr, t‘u now}; 2211:: shrew; .-l_,- canny-Laue with its Sixnlwsgouroan

3° flux-11:11, p. lLY.
31 n.-

$ULK‘O. 1:. 96s

32 0:1. Gite. ." '39.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

spigren...'bet I tell you my lord feel, out of this nettle dander, we

pluck fills {la-f utety.‘ Bit before the volume had even appeared, Elise
“field “I driven from if». gland once noru o; illness, B..eu.i;:lé the
winter in Ospedsletti and ibntono inure 52w loomed of no success of her
book. then she began to receive ::m:1,‘ letters from sin-.1, lo ,‘eo;le who 1':th
her sort. 3h. felt a responsilli;oy to these .uo_lu. To them she Just
tell the trufli. 1111s preocou; ation mith truth ‘oeoazxe the 0021511111,: yaseion
of her last years.

According to Joseph Collins "dexmlogunt and timburitag"s;5 marked her
third collection i'he Garden Part“ 1542, which was the last one ever saw:
in print. It is in this volume thaw :wst critics are agreed that the
author's hehnique is most perfectly revealed. Indeed many of her con-
tnporary critics regarded her an "the hunt remarkable short story writer
of tar generation.'“ It is in this volume that three of her famous New
lesions stories appear, the title story, "it tho Day," are! 'The Voyage."
Her last New Zealand tale “The Doll’s douse" a;-,:eared in e ,zosthumue
collection, The Dovss' Host.

fhe last phase of Eatlwriuo Ihuaflo ld'e life was one of illness and
self-disillusionment followed 57 a Jami-.15 for sgirituel rebirth and
supreme objectivity, which resulted in her retire-lent at Gurdjei‘i‘ Institute
near Fonteinebleau. SteadilJ growing beaker from tuberculosis, she ebon-
doned her writing after emulating her final story "The Canary," July, 1922.
lit she believed the weakness which tnevented her from writing was not

urely physical, but spiritual as well. To this oelf-dloilluaiuant she

38 Joseph Collins, The Doctor Looks at Literature (New York, 1923),
’s 152e

“ 3.11. 02. cit... p. «.

 

 

 

 

refelnned as her “private revolution.”55 Cemrlctely dissatisfied in .11

of her eerk, she remarked: 'I an tired of my little stories like birds
h’ed in cages."36 She ens convinced that she could attain supre-xe
objectivity by a yUJ‘Clnl; of all cgaian frat: her weture. 83 she entered
Gurdjeff Institute near Fontaineblcnu, which ahed to mnbine s-:iritunl
and physical healing. l'nat she beenwo inegired is revealed in a letter

to the countess Russell, December 51, 1522:

I cannot tell you what a joy it is to be in contact with
living 900910 the are stream and quick and not afraid to
he themselves. It's a ’inri of a siren) atria; to be anon:
Meir,

To the late A. R. Dray, nor firct ;u‘;lishcr and constant friend,
she one day confided at Cur-(3031‘: “I've been a caeera - a selective
encore and it has been :1; attit :de tnt 11x23 determined the selection
with the remit that “.y sllcnu of life...have been partial...I plan
to widen the scope of 21y canora...l have begun m1}; tines, but i an
not yet ready...1 sec txn nu; but 1 still have to to it."38

an; the 30mg; author ans never able to cowgzlote her stories of
supreme objectivity for she died suddexly of tuberculosis. John
liddleten Kerry, who saw her at GurdJofi‘ on her last day, January 9,
1923, said of his wife:

...I have never seen nor shall 1 ever see anyone so

beautiful as she was on that day; it was as though the

exquisite perfection which was always here had taken

possession of her conrlctely. To use her own words, the
last grain of 'sedimnt,‘ the last 'traccs of earthly

‘5 letters, II, p. 508.
35 1mm. 13. 816,
37 Ibid., p. 516.

3° ”Talk: with Katherine Mansfield," Centggx, c1v (November, 192‘),
pp. 38-89.

 

 

 

 

 

legrodaticn,‘ were departed forever...
As she came up too stairs to her roan at 10:00 “32., she

us seised by a fit of coughing...“ 10:50 she was dead.39

COOCOOOOOOCOO0.0.0.0000...0.00.0.0...OOOIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

In the ccmunal scooter; of Avon, near Fontaineblaau is Fatherine
knefield'e grave, and on her gravestone are inscribed these words -

her favorite lines from 8‘1al:es;:oare...but I tell you my lord feel, out

of this nettle danger, ec pluck thin flower safety.“o

'iier flowering \Ias t.;o flowering of 1.5.0 aloe, 'that flower safety,’

flush rooted in its own soil, :us‘nin; through the nettles, measures its

height in upper air, at last - and flowering; dies."41

89
40 Journal, op. 01?... pp. 255-6.

The First Part of Hem the F'ourth, II, iii.
‘1 fleets and marry, cg. cit” p. 18.

 

 

 

Part 11

WWW? OF Willi

1h easellense of Katherine lhnsficld's short stories lies in her
“up . a craftsmanship of fem which is attained through its
m m of tradition - a craftsmanship of matter shieh is based
upon is author's personal sense of truth, and achieved through the
m of subtle tedxniques, all greatly enhanced by the author's out
using sensibility.

Ilse hnsfisld’s stories are models of f-om, yet they reveal all of
the Intentional vagaries of the mdern short story - scorn of plot and
ell-I, economy of cord and .ihrasc, and invasion of other literary ferns.
l'he author nae horsslf 'a pioneer in the story without plot. Though not
fie first to nab such an attc-yt, she stopped forth more bravely and

l
advaassd hrther." this was undoubtedly due to the effect of the First
brld hr upon her. Tint tho comer use profoundly concerned over mm:-
ity's issue of heart after ‘ia'orld ‘u'ar I, and conscious of a need for a new
literary tens to express it, is evident in her letter of Komber 10,
1919s
It is really fearful to see the settling down of human beige.

I feel in fiie pro foundcst sense that nothing can ever be the

s- - that as artists so are traitors if we feel otherwise; as

have b talus it into account and find new expressions, use moulds,

for our new thoughts and feelings. What has been stands. But

Jase Austen could not write florttgger Abbey new — or if she did,

I'd have none of her...3

the you); author shared Chsldzov's scorn of plot and climax because she

did not see life arranging itself into plots, yet like Ghekhcv, too, all of

1 George Has-per, Litem Apgreciations (New York. 1931), p. 235.
* letters, Vol. 1, p. 247.

 

 

 

 

 

 

at “"3“ do not show a con-ion: disregard for plot and climax, but

as M 1- Dionne-at that those sane stories or traditional handling
on be less successful ones. Let us first consider three of her tales
in ‘1‘ he Iaplcye plot me slim: to learn what it is they lacked
“It Dr Dre susceseml and. less glottod stories contained, namely.
"fh Little Gunmen," 'A Guy of Tea," and ”Elise.“

Muttedly the nest conventional of the three is "the Little Gover-
Iess,‘ see of t): author's early teleu vhich concerns a shy, young girl
fie is travelling alone to Au._sbur,_ where the ex;eots to receive a
fleeting poet in a doctor's really. The co.:;lieatlons of the plot slowly
arise eith the appearance of e kindly old Gen-nan tho befriends her, and,
so new, insists upon showing; the little governess the beauties of ltunich.
11D ell" is reached when the unsophisticated miss accepts the kindly old
man's effer to stop for e while at his bachelor flat, and eventually
discovere file old man is neither kindly nor gentlemanly. With a sudden
“new. file author ends the Mary With the ymmg woman's rushing out
is peat huts and frustration to the hotel where she is to met her new
”leis! . only to learn that the doctor's wife has salted long; for her
lid left with no word] Thus "The Little Governess" is slostehed in quits
the traditional manor. Its align: plot interests the reader, as do the
sharp Master contrasts of the shy young girl and the wily old German.
hat the tale is not one of Kiss Kansfield‘e best, for it lacks the sublety
Mid notional intensity of her greatest stories which are stripped of plot.

1: a later work "A Cup of Tea," though remarkably sell done in tradi-n
tieaal handling, and more subtle in characterisation than her former piece,
the ace guilty of emotional intensity is lacking. the plot concerns a
'Ielthy you; ntrcn, Rosemary, who befriends a penniless girl who asks

 

 

 

 

 

on? for W Price of a one or ten. ' She takes me waif how-e, surfeits

her on M dainties, and even plans to ado;t her. The climax 1. reached
1!“ m beds the advice oi‘ her hum-sud to let the girl 50, for she
is and be bautii‘ul to remain in his hone. The subtle characterisation
of Ies‘ry light dupe the then htloes render into thinking her a lady
bmtiml, but the t'mui htful reader is well aware of the young: natrcn'e
selfish aid flimsy soul by various inyliocticns scattered throughout the
story, by her behavior, her loci. of action, and her conversation. Yet
'A duo of ‘l'sa' ransins one of Lites .Zaxsfiuid'e less effective stories
beause she no more oonoemez‘. wi 3.: the situation and its outcome than
the intensity of that situation, which .-:ar‘..s her roost sl ini‘lcnnt torts.
hour story in which the author e:.-._-lc;rs plot and olinax is "bliss,“
Iith situations rising one u..-on the other until the final olinax at the
end. Tb talc bolus quite in 21.105 tinnerield's best technique, the
intensification of mod. 3.10 ,Lctures bruins, a young married woman
blissfully happy on a summer afternoon - and for no gnrtloulnr reason at
alls
“hush Eartha Young; was thirty she still had moments like
this Ihen she wanted to run instead of talk, to take dancing
shps cn and off the paw-sent, to bowl a hoop, to throw some-
thin‘ up in the air Md catch it again, cr_tc stand still and
laugh at - nothing; - at mthin; , si..1.vly...b
l’hs plot gradually unfolds with northn's arrival at home and «nuch fancy
preparation for a. dinner gsu'ty that evening to honor hiss Fulton, an
sactic author, and Burtha'n best friend. Despite her husband's utter
indifference toward the young author, Bertha seems to feel a kindred spirit
of understanding in her. Throughout the evening Bertha's recline; of bliss

is absolute. She is in love with her husband and deeply fond of her friend.

' the Short Bteries of Katinrine Mansfield, p. 537.

 

 

 

 

As the plot ascends, hiss ihnsficld again creates a subtle mod by

seer-intensification of pictorial effect in an image of quivering bsmty,
as file tn kindred spirits, brtha and the exotic author, share the
aquisite grace of a flowering pear tree as togetlnr they gass from the
rinses:
he long did they stand there? Both as it were, caught

in that circle of unearthly light, understanding each other

priestly, creatures of another world, and rendering that

Guy sore to do in this one via; all this blissful treasure

that burned in their bosons and dro;;.red, in silver flowers,

rm- their mm- and mm.‘
using higher tonrd a sudden climax in the last scene in which aortha's

nod of bliss cones to a sudden end no she ovorhoars and sees for herself
evidence of a clandestine affair between her husband md her best friend.
'lxt his story with the sting in the last sentence was really not
Katherine Hansfield's business, for the and, the climax of action in
'Ilies‘ is nuoh less subtle than the real effect of bliss which was

”“1"“ Without the elements of unnecessary action.'5

In“. the author in all three pieces "the Little Governess,‘I "A Gup
°f T“; and “Bliss“ ceases to be true to herself shon she attempts to
tell a story in the conventional method employing; plot and action; for
her traditional handling of plot and climax invariably clutters her story,
”flag the author in her greatest achievement, the intensification of
much or mood.

Let us not consider three of Katherine liansfield's more significant
“d 111mm» more successml stories in which her scorn of plot and climax

1' W113! evident throughout, and learn how the author achieved her effects

‘ Ibids. Pa “7s

5 Edward m, "Katherine lhnsficld," London Ian-om, m1 (January.
192°)s Po 391s

 

 

without the, namely: “Prelude,“ 'liiss 3-111," and "The Fly.“

many her last nearly perfect one, there is no definite plot, no dramatic
ell-ax, yet she has created the illusion of actuality.
life hrs - real persons. As bar structure, "it is doubtful if Chemov

hineelf would have dared to build u,: anything on so fragile a foundation."6

Even lee )hnefield could scarcely exglain its untraditional form and

In 'Prelnds,‘ her first lice Zealand story, which is considered by

wrote in answer to the inquiries of an intimate friend:

t1.
the

What form is it?‘ you ask. Ah...it is so difficult to say.
As far as I know, it's more or lose my oven invention. And
'ho' have I shaped it“ That is about as much as I can say
about it. You know, if the truth were known I have a perfect
passion for the island there I was born...in the early morning
".1 always re-ne {oer fealin; that this little island has dipped
back into the dark blue sea during the night only to rise again
at gleam of day, all hung n th bright spangles and glittering;
drops. (When you ran over the dery grass, you positively felt
that your feet tasted salt.) I tried to catch that moment vrith
consuming of its sparkle and its flavour. And just as on those
mrningo white milky .nlscs rise and uncover sons beauty, then
nether it again and then disclose it, I tried to liftthat
nist from my people and lot then be seen, and then to hide them
‘E‘insee',

Actually 'Prolude“ consists of a series of twelve episodic parts,
first four of which concern moving; day in the Mall family and

mining; eight picture life in their use hem. The story moves

Vith complete freedom of traditional incunbsranoes of plot and climax

in a series of pictures of everyday happenings of the Burnell family,

thereby giving the tale its necessary continuity. In producing her

imagery, the author has an uncanny knack of drawing noon the reader ‘s

can experience to enhance the vividnoss of her picture.

selection is highly illustrative of this, for with similar childhood

aperienees flooding ow minds, as peer with little Kesia mrnell through

6
7

Andre lhurois, Proghets and Poets (New York, 1935), p. 335.
Letters, 1, pp. 14-5.

There is real

The following

 

 

 

 

a selcredwindewfiass of her old home:

lb dining-reels window had a square of coloured glass
at set sonar. One was him and one see yellow. lesia
mm to have one were look at a blue law: with blue
ar- lilles growing at the gate, and then at a yellow law
with yellow lilies nd a yellow fence. .'.s sin laolasd a
little Gaines iottie case out on the lawn and began dust
”I tables md shdrs with a corner of her pinafors...

0r - rs-livs playing, house in the mic v. rld of mate-believe with little

[sale and her tiny sister lattic-

ouths dinner .0 baking beautifully on a concrete stop.
he Ugh to lay the cloth on a 913‘; garden seat. In
fleet of each yerson she put two gorsnlmn leaf plates, a
91- needle fork and a twig knife. 'i'mre were three daisy
basis on a laurel leaf for JOId'lOd eggs, some slices of
Mela petal cold beef, some lovely little rissoles :xade
of earth and water and dandelion seeds, ani the chocolate
custard finish she had decided to nerve in the pawa shell

eh m coolsed it in...9
{In "Vital-clear imagery of tin him-all flower garden makes the very

senses ads with reality:

«can the other side of the drive there was a high box

brder and the paths had box edges and all of then. led into
‘ “CW and deeper hnglo of flowers. The ounssllias were

in blocs, white and crinson and pink and white striped with
leaves. You could not see a leaf on the syringe

bushes fer the white clusters. The roses were in flower -

Mtlmn's button-hole roses, little white ones...pink
unthly roses with a ring of fallen petals round the rushes,

“We roses on thick stalks, nose mess, alsays in bud,
Pink moth beauties opming curl on curl, red ones so dark
“by seemed to turn black as they fell, and a certain
quuisite cream kind with a slender red stem and bright

scarlet leaves.»10
In sad: at the above examples the author has succeeded in creating the

illusion of reality through the artful handling of one of her most

brilliut techniques, iaagery.

8 he Short Stories of Kaherine llansfield, p. 222.

.
10 we. Ps me
was Ps 239s

 

 

 

 

 

Another mans of producing her realistic effects is through her sharp

Masterisations. Unlike use usual method of stressing a main character,

lies Ianstlcld's readers cons to know the entire Darnell fanny - the

author's em. But it is not only as a group that the reader knows the
harnell's but individually, each nether of the big family, the father and
nether, the grandsother and aunt, and the three little sisters. Strigpcd
of sentinmtslity, Linda and Stanley, the roster and father, are dram
with complete objectivity by the author tin-ou-h subtle subjective handling.
A striking exanglo of such objectivity in characterization can be found in
the mind of Linda herself a

...it was always Stanley who was in the thick of danger.

Ber whole time was sgcnt in rescuing his, and calning him down,
and listening to his story. And that was left of her time was
spent in the dread of having children.

Linda frmmcd;...‘!cs, that was her real grudge against life;
that was that s‘ze could not understand. That was the question
she asfnd and asked, and listened in vain for the answer. It
sac all very well to say it was the cosmos lot of women to hear
children. It wasn't true. She, for one, could prove that wrong.
311! Vac broken, made weak, her courage was gone, through child-
bearing. And what made it doubly hard to hear was, she did not
1070 her children. It was useless pretending...llo, it was as
thou h a cold breath had chilled her throth and through on each
or those awful journeys: she had no wannth left to give them...“

Likewise unsontinontal are her got-traits of the Darnell children, Kesia
”14 Isobel, done with deft, sharp strokes. In the tailoring selection the
reader sees Quite clearly the pride and courage of Little Kesia on moving
“37 as the author subtly intensifies the emotions or a moment by natural,
“Pretentious details
Roll! she didn't care! a tear rolled dcen her check, but she
hen't crying. She couldn't have cried in front of those awml
Gemael Josephs. She sat with her head bent, and as the tear

dripped slowly down, she caught it with a neat little whisk or
her tongue and ate it before any of them had seeml2

‘1 Ibid., p. 257.
13 Ibid., p. 222.

 

 

 

 

 

ht Ieebl is the epitome of the superior eldest sister is proved con-

elusiwely ”to (brown the child's own conversation with her mothers

i dee't want to tell you but I think I ought to. Kssia
is drinking tea out of Aunt bryl's cup...

It is Waugh he mind of Linda that the portrait of the granchmther is
tenderly Gawn with the transparency of life:

Linda lead her cheek on her fingers and watched her mother.
She thought her nether looked wonderfully beautiful with her
task to the leafy window...there was somthing comforting in
tin sight of her that Linda felt she could never do without.

She needed the sweet smell of her flesh, and the soft feel of

hr cheeks and her arms and shoulders still softer. She loved
file way her hair curled, silver at the forehead, lighter at her
neck, and bright brown still in the big coil under the muslin

up. Exquisite were br mother's hands, and the two rings she
were second to melt into her creamy skin. And she was always so
fresh, so delicious. The old woman could bear nothing but linen
neat to her body and she bathed in cold water winter and .mr.“

the author pictures everyday happenings, yet it is the very intensity
of tin ordinary day that quielnns the reader 's emtions. We have already
noted little Kosia peering through a colored glass, of her courage on
mving day, and the deligdmtful experience of three little girls playing
house. Another example of intensifying a commonplace situation is the
hired mn's killing of a due]: for the Bzrnell's evening meal. The author
has heigztened it to the point where the reader is deeply moved by the
sensitiveness of a little girl who sees for the first tine the killing of
a harmless creature.

Moon the children saw the blood they were frightened no longer.
they crowded round him and began to scream. Even Isobel leaped,
about crying, "i’he bleed! the blood“

.ufiven Dottie, frightened little Lottie, began to laugh, and
point at the duck and shrielosd, 'Lcok, Essie, look!

'Itsh it” shouted Pat. lie put down the body and it began to
waddle - with only a long spurt of blood where the head had been;

it began to pad away without a sound towards the steep bank that
16d h the OWNeee

15 11:19.. 233.
“ use“ p. 238

 

 

 

 

'lt's lib a little engine. it's like a {my little
railvay encinsfl equaled Isobel.

M lesia suddenly rushed at Pat nd flung her ares round
his legs and hutted her. head as hard as she could against

his knees.
‘Put head back! Put heed hack! she screamed.

henhestoopcdtomve her sheeouldnet letgo ortaloe
her bad aw. She held on as hard as she could and eobbeds

'bad ink! need back! until it sounded lib a loud stratus
hiccup.

the story ends dth little Ibsia entering, Aunt Beryl's room to
announce tint her father eas home with a m and that lunch vac ready.

Aunt Beryl had been rudely interrupted in her daily reverie of self-pity.
M no latter! Stanley Moll had no taste in picking men - this one
could he no better than the others. l'here would never be a man for her)
Beaver, bryl powdered her nose and hurried out of the room. But there
is no druatio slim: here. more is nothing particularly won or lost in
to. screen runny. we the reader 1. left with the feeling that use
will go on tomorrowverynuch the some as it did the day before and the
day before that.

thus it is that 'Prelude." Ilse Msfisld's first lee Zealand story,
succeeds by its utter freedom of form. It moves along quite without effort.
mhcapered by conventional plot and climax, through its rare inagcry,ite
sharp oharnotsriaatien,and notional intensity.

Another of her masterly pieces vhieh likewise succeeds through its utter
disregard of traditional action is "lass will,“ a poignant story of an old
said those only loved possession was a dingy fur-piece. To tell her story,
the aufiaor depends almost entirely on tho characterisation of the lonely
old teacher. As the story opens, Miss Brill is sitting in her accustomed

Guaday bench at the Jardins Publiquee of Paris listening to the hand concert

15 2mm. p. 251.

 

 

 

 

 

 

ad ntshin; ihe people around her. The fall air nae cool and she was

glad that she had deeided to near her hr. 11: somehow gave her a sense
of -ll-bin; - beeides she us actually fond of her little bar-piece!
Ills-ouch inc subtle art of the author the character or Miss kill herself
~r¢ss through the description of the forlorn neck-piece which likewise

takes on living personality as it is seen through the eyes oi‘ its devoted

ener I

lies B'ill put up her hand and touched her 1hr. Dear
little thing! It was nice to feel it again. She had taken
it out of its he: that afternoon, shaman out the mth-powder,
given it a good bush, and rubbed the life back into the din

little eyes. 'h‘nat has been Mgpflnlnc to ne.‘ said the sad
little eyes. Oh. how scoot it was to see them snap at her
again from the red eiderdomi...fmt the nose, which was of
some black composition. wasn't at all firm. It must have had
a knock somehow. Never mind - a little dab of black scali -
we: when the time came - won it was absolutely necessary.1
As the lonely old roman sits alone in its Jardins Publiqms and watches
the people she libs to feel that it is all a stage and that even she
has a put to play each sunday, that even she is a part at the performance!
Presently a richly dressed yomg ”“916 shares her bench. She is so
interested in observing then. To her they are the hero and we heroine.
nit suddenly mes bill's world of life and mmmoe and beauty is shattered
by uni-ind remarks or the young couple:
...'Stupid old thing...‘lhy does she cone here at all - the
unto hori ... (the boy said)
...'1t'a hot fu—i‘ur which is so 8' giggled the girl.
'It'e cxnotly like a fried whiting.'1
To intensify the motionnl situation of iiise kill and thereby touch
the hearts of her readers. the author uses the cool technique of Ohekhrw

whose advice in his letters she once painstakingly copied in her nctstcok

16 the Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield. 9. 64:9.

1' lbid.. p. 553.

 

 

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sad Mr heeded:

'Iien you depict sad or unlucky people and vent to touch
puple's hearts. try to he colder - it gives their grief.
as it care, a has round against which it stands out in

sharper relief. ' 1

It is at that nee h'ill did so much as whet she did not do on that day
ht prion the hearts of the readers. And the author, artfully sure of
this. intensities the situation to its most poignant potentialities. The
reader is aade sears of the fact that usually after the Sunday concerts
lies Mil stopped at the baker's and bought a slice of honey-cake. It
eas her finday treat. Sometimes there was even an almond in the cake.
Dash a surprise was part of her Sunday fun...
Int today she passed the baker's by. climbed the stairs,

sent into the little dark room - her roan like a cupboard -

Mid eat dam on the red eiderdoen. She sat there for a long

tins. The box that the fur came out of was on the bed.

She molasped the necklet quickly; quickly without looking,

laid it inside. But when she put the lid on she thought she
heard something crying“)

do it is in this notable story |'lliss nun," likewise as in "Prelude,”
her tuned new Iceland piece that the author produces her finest effects
tin-cued: sharp revelation of character and intensification of emotion,
quite independent of traditional action.

But perhaps most significant of all her plotless stories and the most
trilliont ample of her new expressions and new moulds is Miss hansi‘ield‘s
1"“ Pubu'h‘d 039. ”The Fly,“ a tale brief and intense and considered by
many "her nearest approach to her on final ideal."2° bthing actually
happens but that a man 1:111. . fly by throwing ink upon us - and V“ th-

:8 I'M-deg pp. 5539‘s

9 The Sore. book of Katherine ”field. Edited by J. Middleton wirry
(lee forE, 11%,, p. [33. ' ' ""

2° Critical mm. or Katherine mans. Introduction by
M. P. Vs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

intimation concerns all humankind. It is the story of the degradation

of a soul, aid yet it is more - it it a tale of the age-old struggle of
hI-anity. For such a tremendous subject, plot would have been most
essential to most authors, but to Bliss fiancfield it was quite useless.

is she discards it entirely and gains her effects again through her
my revelation of character and intensification of motion. Her two
principal characters , the ball: executive, whom she chooses to call instead
"“8 boss," and the fly are drawn with expert precision.

Tb author first focuses the reader's attention on the boss, who had
grew rich during the First world War 816 new, six years after, had so
blmbd his soul on fits materialistic things of life that even the
Isacries of his dead sea no longer pain him. As he sits in his elaborately

fumished office casually reading The Financial Times an old acquaintance

 

steps in to tell the boss that his daughters, lately returned from Belgian
to visit their ls-other's grave came across his boy's also. The hose is
suddenly priclacd hy the consciousness of neglect and indifference toward
his dead son, but it is not until the old i‘riend departs mad the boss spies
a fly struggling in his inkpot that the soul of the tank executive is actu-
ally revealed. It is revealed Waugh what would seem at a casual glance
to be more trivial detail, but which in reality is a subtle bit of
craftsmanship on the part of tin author; for it is through the «casing
characterisation of the fly symbolising humanity, together with the boss 's
sadistic treatnent of the insect that actually tells her story - m
struggle of hmuanlcind and the degradation of a soul.

And new the author focuses the reader 's attention on both the boss and
the fly through a subtle fusion of characterisation. The boss satehes the

fly trying fecbly but desperately to clember out, but the sides of the

 

 

 

lanes sere slippery and it fell back trying to swim. Then the boss

hot I. a pen. picked him up at! shook him on a piece of blotting. paper.
1h sadistic nature of the boss reveals itself in derncniac degrees.
After discovering that the fly through laborious exertion is once more
ready for life , the banker loam his mic}: urist on the blotting paper
and fi'lst as the fly tries its since, dove: comes a great heavy blot of
ink. Once sore a strug; 10 for life eneueo and once more the fly is
really for life - but weaker this time. an: the soul of the boss is
really barcd when in discover-in; time 1'1] again succeeds 1.; its struggle,
he dips his pen in the inkgot and drowns the fly on the blottinL gulf-01‘s
the tremendous emotional impact of the story is achieved throu'h the
subtle fission of characterisation together with tho totality of ingress-
ion, that of a futile struggle against a cruel fete.

Thus in all three of her pieces "Prelude,“ "lass will,” and "The
Fly' - as in all of her successful tales - the absence of action is a
determining; factor in the cont-lots freedom of form of her stories . for
it is through this very absence that the shaklcs of traditional over-
formulaticn are broken, leaving the autimr free and mhanpcred to create
actuality in her own ricxly perceptive way - through sharp characterisa-
tion urnl emotional intensity.

Still another untraditional vetted shich the minor enplcyed was
strict economy of word sud phrase, which necessarily resulted in extreme
brevity. The author moulded most of her stories into slight proportion -
but of 'a powerful slightness."21 She oxylained this slightnees in the
following entry of her Journal a

 

mulchcv made a mistake in tucking that if he had more time,

21 um. Gather, lbt Under pox-g (new York, 1956), p. 145.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

b could have written more iu lly. described the rain and
the nitrite and the doctor having tea. The truth is, one
can only get so much into a story; there is always a
sacrifice. One has to leave out what one knows and 1°95.
to use. Why? I haven't any idea, but there it is ".3

It is her a-nasing word economy that accounts for her minute strokes
of characterisation and description. For exam. le, Stanley hirnell in
“At the any“ is characterised in a single gesture - he scald not kiss
his wife goodbye because she could not find his walking stick. The

author adds in her final sharper strolest "And he meant that as a punish-

n-it to hem“:3 Much of her art in description lies in her brief,

impressionistic strokes. Thus, toe tea cubes in her little story “The
Young Girl" are node vivid and delectable without any actual detail:

'...rcv upon row of little freaks, little inspirations, little melting

circa-$3“

l'he slightness of plot and proportion of her stories are the natural
result. too. of her strict nerd economy. Perhaps the most brilliant
ample of her brevity is her last published story 'i'he Fly' told in but

twenty-five hundred words, "yet she has expressed mu here than mot

authors say in a novel."25

Expressing hr contempt of the redundant writer and her on fastidi-
ousnesa in word choice, Kiss lhnsfield wrote in 1915 to a friend:

I'm a .Vcwrful stiokler for fom...1 hate the sort of license
that anglish people give thensslvec...tc spread over and flop
endzacll about. I feel as fastidious as if I wrote with acid

23 02. cit... p. 221.
35 11.. Short Stories of Katherine iisnsfield (m York, 19‘s). p. 270.

24 Ibid.. p. «5.

25 Joseph Collins no Dootor looks at Literature (New York, 1923).
p. 166. m

26 Letters, 1, p. 4.

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

Anchor mtraditional vsgary of the readers short story which

Katherine hnsi'ield's works reveal is its invasion or other literary

bras. Continually over-stepping the bomdaries of the essay, bicgraghy,

short play, and lyric g-oen, her stories succeed by their very freedom

and elasticity.

Lib a deserigtive essay "At the ky," a sequel to "Prelude,“ owes
its share to a series of images depicting the lee Iceland seaside.
This asthod of composing a story in pictures is wholly her cm, quite
ineonparablo to ofixer artists. She CJ‘JI‘OMHOO her subject by home of
the eye in order to produce the greatest jasciole visual impact on the

aind or the reader. The author first UJI'OUd. her readers in a white,

milky mist:

...‘i‘he sun was not yet risen, and the whole of Crescent
hy was hidden under a white sea-mist. The big bush-covered
hills at the back were smothered. You could not see shore
they ended end the paddocks and bmgalows began. The sandy
road was gone and the paddocks and hangalows the other side
of it. there were no shite dunes covered with reddish grass
beyond them were as nothing to ml: which was teach and
where was sea. A heavy dew had fallen. The grass was blue.
Big drops hm; on the hushes...thc silvery, fluffy toi-toi
eas limp on its long; stalks, and all the migclds and the
pinks...wero bowed to the earth with wetness. branched were
as. cold fuchsia, round pearls of dew lay on the flat
nasturtiun leaves. it looked as though the sea had beaten
up softly in the darkness, as though one immense wave had
come rippling, rippling...2

Then Misc iiunsi'iold raises the mist to paint living pictures 01‘ the
Bumcll really at the sec. The following is a vivid piece of imagery
of the grandmother. the little Trout boys, and the three young sisters.

Isobel, Kaela, and woe Lottie:

...Old lire. Fairi‘iold, in a lilac cotton dress and a black
hat tied under the chin, gathered her little brood and got
them ready. The little 'l‘rout boys whipped their shirts over

27 The Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield. pp. 2654.

 

 

 

 

 

 

their heads, and sway the five sped, while their grandee

sat with one hand in her hitting-beg ready to draw out

the hall of moi when she was satisfied they were safely in.
The tins couaact little girls were not half so brave as

the tender, delicate-locking little boys. Pip and Bags,

shivering, muehiw dean, sla,.-ping the water, never hesitated.

hat lsohsl, who could swim twelve strokes, and Basia, vho

could nearly swim eight, only followed on the strict under-

standing they were not to be splashed. As for Lottie, she

didn't follow at all. She lilood to to left to go her own way,

please. And that way was to sit dam at the edge of the water,

her legs straight, her knees pressed together, and to make

vague motions with her arms as if she expected to be waftsd

out to sea. on when a bigger wave than usual, an old whiskery

one, case lolloping along in her direction, she scrambled

her feet with t a... of horror and flew up on beach .gun. 8

‘Ihs author ends her story of a day by the sea in a still picture of dark-
ness, nudi as she began, only this darkness is of the night, not its dams
L cloud, small, serene, floated across the moon. in that

unset of darkness, the sea sounded deep, troubled. Then

the cloud sailed may, and the sound of the sea was a vague

wit)” though it wind out of a dark dream. All was

still.

Some of flies ibnsfiold's stories talc on the form of short bio-
graphies. is striking; oxemglo of this is "The Life of la Parker,"
biography of a oharworwx. Slight in outline but stark in tragedy is
this 111% history of a pitiful old women who has known nothing but
historians since she left hone at sixteen and is so overwhelmed with
work and trouble that she has never been able to afford even the luxury
of a cry.

A few of the author's pieces are sheer dramatic monologues. l‘wc
“alii‘iosaat canopies of this borrowed art form are ”The Lady's laid"
and "The Canary,” both of which reveal pathetic characters in the
“W391!“ language of the speaker. 1t is through the lips of the

forlorn little lady's maid herself that her own clnracter is subtly

as 1114., p. 274.
29 Jihad" Pa 39’s

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

revealed, as sin tells her friend all about her dear, dead mistress.

Another portrait of the soul poignantly divulged in her last story,
“the “nary; is a lonely woman. She grime for the loss of her only
loved possession - a canary. And all of her loneliness and heart-hmger
can to fend in her words:
...I loved him. How I loved him! Perhaps it does not

latter so very and: what it is one lavas in this world.

mt love somethinr one mush“)

Doubling even the lJrio poem - not so much in form as in effect -
file umcr's little tales are records of mood and sensitivity. Katherine

”afield herself confessed this quality in her Journal: "I feel always

 

tumbling on the brink of poetryJ'H' itrhaps the nest subtle example of
a story built fly on mood alone is “m: Wind Blows,” in which nothing
happens at all, and yet ever-fining scans to happen. It is a tale of the
mysterious fewer of the elements over the mode of man. Md yet it is
are, ”it is o. tale of the loneliness of men on this planet - and yet

the whole thing in made up of little yiooeo of nothing - little gusts of

.32
0

wind Like a. posh this little story begins with mood and ends with

nod:

Suddenly - dreadfully she wakes up. What has hqmenedt
Something dreadful has happened. No - nothing, has happened.
It is only the wind shaking the house, rattling the windows,
hanging s piece of iron on his root end making her bed
tremble. Leaves flutter past the vdndow, up and down; down
in the avenue a whole newspaper wage in the air like a lost
kite and falls spiked on a pine tree. It is cold. Sunder
is over - it is autwm - everything; is ugly...it is all over:
that is? Oh, everything...33

80

The Short Stories of Katherine Msfield, p. 605.
31

02. 01%.. De ‘4
‘3 Robert mean, ”Katherine Mansfield, ”New Re-ublic, xmv,

(Februry 23, 1950), p. 22.
38 The Short Stories of Kati-Lorine Mansfield, pp. 214-5.

 

 

 

 

¢

 

 

 

And at the close of the story she turns in reminiscence of that windy

day in be Zealsnd and carries on s. mental conversation eith her dead

bother 3

Look, bgey...there's the csglansde where we salt-ed that
eindy day. Do you reenter? I cried at my music lesson
that day - how any years ago! Good-bye, little island!

good—bye... ,,
The rind - the elnd."4

ibst of the euiz'ior's stories are 111:0 goons, in that they degend on
feeling and not fable for their effects. It was because of her on
peculiar gift of viritin.” which led her lxuo‘oend, J. iiiddleton Jurry, to
say that ”her affinities ere ratlwr with the on, lieh roots.”6

the conglxoo freedom in fem of Latins-inc lianefiold's short stories
- its score of _lot and climax, its economy of eord and phrase - left
the author umm..x_,orod to tell her truth with greater clarity and finer
intensity. But before considering how the author built up her stories,
let us firs: Inez-.1 just what her truth really was.

Like other writers of 33110171 fiction who developed during the var
flare of 1914-1016, the young author me greatly concerned with the
Presentation of truth. 50th Virginia "0011' and Katherine fiansfiold
sougxt for truth as their chief sin, yet their 'JGthOdB to obtain this
truth mere quite unlike. iuinittin; tl‘AOll' similarities and differences
in a letter to Virginia “self on .iuLuet, 1917, flies liansfield said:

he nave got the some Job, Virginia, and it is really
- 7017 curious and thrilling that we should both, quite apart

from each other, be after so nearlg the some thing. We are,
you know; there's no denying that. 6

That those two feminine oontemgorsries "tended in much the same direction

3‘ me” p. 219.
35 Journal, o2. cit., p. xiv.
86 Letters, 1, p. 71.

 

 

 

 

 

i
v

 

in their Douro): for a corn-11w niuo‘aw‘ity,‘ it; also L'iu agaisn o: Juvid
Daiches, win“. this i'vxpr'ouzo L131; 3:192:00: he ; fwouc‘. wit"; ‘1‘) ”1) :s infin-
il‘ real life, It‘s. "0011‘ asks her readers to look within. Katherine
lanstisld asked rather for a clearer vision with which to look out. The
tn procedures are not diaootrioally onxonite, .ut tend to anount to the
ease thing. in r-raotice that it can.) to use this: Katherine Mansfield
refined herneli’ before looking on life, while Vir;;inia 't'oooif refined life
before looking out on it.":7 Miss ‘danefioid's was a personal sense of
truth, then, with her air: 1:01.21," alt-L151: to :jet coiglctely outside herself.
baring iitncsu to the author's air. of no.1._lcte ohjectivity is the

following envy to her Journal: "I can't tell the truth azout Aunt Anne

 

unless I a tree to exter her life without heli‘ooonsoioum'tess."58 With
Iatlnrine Mansfield the particular cases of initial observations provided
the story. "She ”H.133 observe with utter clarity because there was no
“mutant prooeos of eon,.-arison and reflection. That was why she was

.0 unions to observe vritkwut eelf-ooneeiouaness. For such a sense of
”Nth, tin mind must be a perfectly clear glass through uhich truth can
We undistorted. Then the personal sense of truth will cerresyond to
"any-'59 Katherine ihnefield's personal sense of truth was embodied
1“ ‘ Personal vision of an aspect of hman behavior. The etory ac fable
hardly mattered to her - what did matter was the intensity of the vision
Nd! she could transmute into tangi‘zdlity. “The literature of vision of
Ihioh Katherine mnstieid'a stories are characteristic tends to come into

Press as a part of the reaction against what is regarded as ever-formulated

3" the novel and the Modern Vbrid (Chicago, 1938), p. 162.

5° 92 cit., p. 193.
5’ Daiehes, 0;. w... pp. 76-7.

 

 

 

 

 

 

.40

and morefore not sufficiently objective type of table literature.
is a result these vmodern re‘ools :roso :tod fiction with new subtleties
«- both in the view of the significant in ex.)cricnce and in the handling
of symbols to express that significance. It is the oginion of David
Daiehes that the Victorians would hardlyr have understood this truth of
the early nedemists, as a general ~.ro‘sloa. of adjust-lent to cx‘arienoc -
and even less as a problem of tecluxiquo in short story \‘rriting.41 In
evaluating: mic trutn of so; re-zc objectivity, Katherine iéausfiold once
marked: "Truth. is so i ;portant that then mu discover a tiny bit of
it you forget about any !-..'-.-1;- also an! all about yourself..."42
to present this ,creanai sense of truth, the author de‘ended greatly
on actual exuoricuoe. The crystal clarity of her imagery was the result
of careful realnicoenoe of childhood. Thus, like Proust much of her
finest mr}: lay in tho cagturo of .oenory. lint such eork required total
detachment - ”death before death.'4" 50 keenly did the young; author

com to feel her 001‘ late isolation from the living world that she con-

fidsd the fallen-in; bit to her Journal: "I think I have known for a
44

 

103; time that life was over for no." Liuch of the author's most

“Snitioant work, her New Zealmd stories, are all brilliant examples
01‘ childhood reminiscence.

boausc Miss Mansfield's stories are built u1.on truth, they are not
particularly hapgy stories, but they are honest; for they reflect changes

that have taken gluon in mood and ninds of people, their dissatisfaction

‘0 Ibid., 3:. 78.

‘1 Ms E‘- 69-
‘3 mums, c2. cit” 3,. 32a.

‘3 ma. p. 327.
a 02' e Cite. p. 38.

 

 

 

qd frustration - in short. her stories. like those of most present day

alters. reflect the discs of modern experience. Yet in spite of the
dues there is a love of life undeniably present in nest of her tar):
and especially evident in all of her new Zealand tales. That the author
herself shared this one love of life cxd constantly yearned to trans-
msts these feelings to her stories, is obvious enough in her letter of
June, 1919:
Life is senderml - wonderful - bitter-mot, and anguish
ad a Joy - and oh! I do not want to be resigned. I wont

te’gink deeply . deeply. Shall I ever be aole to express
it

And in a later letter of may, 192.1, the young writer's love of life was
still «shtic-
It's an infernal nuisance to love life as I do. I seem to

love it more as time boss on rather than less. It never

becomes a habit to me - it's always a marvel. I do hope l'll

be able to keep in it long enough to do some really good

firmnhnutiful lifel To be alive and that is enough. I

could almost any that, but not quite.“

Because the author's stories are built on truth, libs Chekhov“,
sh. he, never shrank from incon‘ lateness which, true to life, is oftm
unsatisfactory in art. Like (finisher, too. Miss Mansfield was not
interested in jointing a moral or ”(pounding a philosophy but instead
thing her reactors "a slice of life,"‘7 and in so doing, getting the
Caution but not answering it. For ermgle, in "The Garden Party" as
in all her othar tales, naming is solved really. The youthful Laura
suddenly mstures in a poi¢nant experience with death. end life than

tabs on a deeper significance for her. But Just that that significance

‘5 letters, I. p. 204.

“ Letters. 11, p. 380.
‘7 3.P.B. llais. Bone Ilodern Authors (londen, 1923), p. 100.

 

 

 

 

 

P

is - or indeed int life is at all - Miss iimsi‘ield's renders must deter-

mine through thoir cen sens ibilities, through their on eager-lenses.

That the yam; author was influenced by Gmiduov in her tectmique of
presenting the question to her readers, seems evident from the ibllowing
letter:

(Ewan? has a very interesting; let-cor published in next
eeek'e A...\mat the writer does is not so much to soles the
question but to i? the qwetion...l'hore nust be the question
put. l‘uat some 0 me a very nice dividing line between the
real and the false writer.“

Perhaps another reason why Lilss '.'.¢msfiold succeeds in depictim; trudz,

in producing actuality is becuuse of her "sxgerieaclsi :,uality,"49 an
ability to transform her very being into her on literary creations.
Free! of this cxgeriencial quality is evident in her letter to s fiicnd
ci’ Octsber 11, 1917:

"Adm I write about ducks, I mar thnt i an a white duck
with a round eye, floating on a pond fringed with yellow blobs,
md taking an occasional dart at the other duel: with the round
eye which floats upside down beneath 119.50

The author‘s dramatic czwrienco takes place in "Prelude":

Up and down they em pruning tin 1r dassling breasts, end
other dudze with the same daisllng breasts end yellow hills
seen upside dcen sith them.5

other evidence of the author's experimcial quality can be round in a
later letter of Konmber 3, 1920:

that a queer business writing; is: I've been this man, been
this screen. I've stood for hours on the AEHand wharf. 7':
been out in the stream waiting to be berthed - I've been a sea
gull hovering at the stern, and a hotel porter whistling through
his teeth. It isn't as though one site and watches the spectacle.

‘3 Letters. I, p. 204.

‘9 Edward Menknect. ”ihmrim Hensficld and Dickens." 31e-
Diekensian. m1 (December. 1929). p. 20.

Xat‘hu‘l. 1. De 7‘.
51 The Short Stories of Ksttnrine Hmni‘ield, p. 250.

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

That would he thrilling; enough, God Emcee. But one _i_s. the
spectacle for the time.52

Another example or the author's drmtic experience is most vividly
proved in a letter, Hero): 27, 1922, as she tells of "The Voyage 3"

...when I wrote that little story, I felt that I see on
that very best, going darn those stairs, smelling the smell
of the saloon. And when the stewardess one in aid said,
'le're rather empty, so may pitch a little ,' I can't believe
that my sofa did not pitch. And one moment I had a little
hum of sill: white hair and n bonnet and the next, I was
Penella males the swan—neck lustrous...“

That Katinrinc Liansi'ield herself recognised this same dranatic quality
in Dickens, one of her favorite authors, is evident tron the following

entry in her Journal:

 

There are moments when Dickens is possessed by this peter
01‘ writing. He is carried away...t‘zus death of Herdle; darn
falling upon the edge of night. One realises exactly the
mood of the writer and how he wrote, as it were, for himself,
but it was not his will. He was the falling dam and he use
the physician Leia; to Dehum- _

Explaining to Horace Walpole one dsy the result of this dramatic quality,
lies lhnsi‘iold called it: “the mysterious chance when you are no longer
writing the story, it is writing you; it possesses you. "'55
Bit how did Katherine L’snsfield build up her story on this personal
sense of truth? By employing the following; methods: revelation of char-
actor and intensification of emotion or mood. To achieve this, called
for Just the rare craftsmanship of matter that the young author possessed,
a mastery of various and subtle techniques vhioh were greatly enhanced by

her on maxing; sensibility.

5"" Letters, 11, pp. 346-7.

55 use" pp. 455-4.
5‘ 02. Cite. Pa 1510
55 Sidney 0oz, 'hstidiousness of Katherine Isnsi‘ield,“ Seesnee
mm, an; (April, 1951). p. 169.

 

 

 

 

 

 

PART III

021M 833135211? 0? was

The short stories of Katherine Hansi’ield are brilliant products of
various techniques handled with we expertness and subtlety of a master
craftanam yet, at the seas tine, they are anasing creations of the
author's om richly perceptive mind. Built upon flies liansfield's
personal sense of truth, the tales mirror actuality throth the skillful
blending of the author's unique and use-fold method of presentation:
revelation of character and intensification of emotion or need.

3] means of the author's technique in telling her tale, 'thrcughout
all of her charaeterisatione we are seemingly dependent on our own insight
instead of hero, in drawing inferences and slowly coming to know her
people. From their voices, silences, smiles, efforts at composing; their
gestures, incompleted notions, we discover their pceer and weakness,
their fears and desires."1 Unlike (ammov, whose world was for the most
part monline, was Hansfiold's is, with some exceptions, a feminine
universe, but one of great variety - of little girls and old ladies, of
fair young women breathless with the seat for life, and faded spinsters
defeated-by life's frustrations. Similar to the Russian meter, however,
is the author's handling of character. fwr in none of her stories are we
left with the feeling that the subject has been picked up, examined, and
set down as co.1_-lotely lznom, like an ornament on a mantel-piece. We
have impressions rather of being for a few moments privileged spectators
of lives that more going on before we observed them and that will continue

was our attention has been drawn elsewhere.

1 Sidney 00x, 'Psstidiousness of Katherine mums," Seeanee
Review, 1% (April, 1981), p. 68.

 

 

ht first let us analyse the author's methods of character

revelation by considerin‘ tb various and subtle techniques which she
csployss subjectivity, inpressionism, exag.__eratien, symbolism, end
sensibility.

To build ug a story by such traditional methods as character and
need, the author necessarily uses to a great extent the subjective noticed
of presentation. Profoundly influenced by the Freudian doctrine of
psyehosnalysis, as were her contemporaries, Virginia “calf and James
Joyce, Miss Mansfield probes into the minds of her characters, and it is
through their thoughts md sensibilities that her stories take on their
significance. hit her psycholobiocl agzgiroach is different from her too
contemporaries. She uses the stream of consciousness method, but not to
the extent, or with the scientific precision of citlnr Virginia Woolf or
James Joyce. Much of i’viss Mansfield“ psychology seems to be innate,
"depending on her personal sense of truth.“ constantly she strove to
lay hold of "tin many little nimble notions of the soul."3 Passing
simply from the conscious to the subconscious, Miss Mansfield increases
the subtlety of her characters through her psychological treatment. A
brilliant oxenple cf the author's subjectivity is ibund in 'Psydxclcgy,‘
an ironies]. tale of two intellectuals who try desperately to bar love
from their lives. The reader gets into their minds through the author's
'mcanny sureness for piercing to Just the right depth below the
obvious'“...

”slid new the stillness put a spell upon them like solemn

umsie. It was anguish .. anguish for her to bear it. And he
would die - he'd die if it were brobn...and yet he longed to

2 David Daiehes, e2. cit., p. as.
3 Elisabeth Drew, no Modern Novel (Ilse fork, me). p. 248.

4 Robert Littell, 'Katherine Nansi’ield,” In no ublie, anv

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yet by speech. At any rate, not by their ordinary maddening
chatter. more was another way for than to speak to each
star, and in the new my he visited to murmur, 'Do you feel
this too! Do you understmd it at all"...

Instead to his horror, he heard himself say, 'I must be off;
1‘: meeting hand at six.'5

In the author's grouy characterisations of tie Moll family in
'Prelude' did “it tm my,“ to come to know each individual member and
his secret life, passionate and intmse. ”It is doubtml that any car:-
tsmporary writer has nado one feel more iosenly the my kinds of
personal relations incl-1 exist in an everyday 'happy fully' the merely
as on living flieir daily lives, with no crises, or checks or bewildering
complications, yet every individual is clinging passionately to his
individual soul."6 “he learn the secret, unhayyy inner drone of Linda,
the dreany, ingracticel mother of the Barnell children, as she walks in
the garden with her rather one evening and muses on Stanley, her husband:

”.119 was too strong; for her: she had always hated things
that rushed at her, hum a child. There were times when he
see frightening - really frightening. mean she just had not
screamd at the top of her voice: "(on are killing me.‘ And
at these tines she had longed to say the rust coarse, hateful
mm‘eee

‘You know I am very delicate. You lauow as well as 1 do
that my heart is affected, and the doctor has told you that
I may die any moment. I have had three lumps of children
‘kefldygoo.

Yes, yes it was true...i‘o; all her love and respect and
admiration she hated him...

We come to 35:13:: the practical nature of Linda's nether, old Mrs. Felt-field,
flan she finally ._.ivos her thoudots exyression, upon being questioned by
her daughter:

'I haven't really been thinking of anything. I wondered

as we gassed the orchard what the unit trees were like and
whether we should be able to main much jam this autmm.

5 The Short Stories of Katherine hiansfield, p. 319.
3 won. Gather, lot Under pom (New York, 1936), pp. 35-37.

7 “Prelude," cg. cit” p. 258.

‘2

 

 

 

, l

 

 

There are splendid healthy currents in the vegetable garden.
I noticed them today. I should like to see those pantry
shelves thoroughly well stocked with our own an...'8

‘fie learn also the innermst thoughts of Linda's sister Beryl as she

gases at herself in the mirrors

Beryl 11.221964 up and half unconsciously, half consciously
drifted over to the looking-gluonmor mouth was rather
large. Too large? lie, not really. Iier underlip protruded
a little; she had a way of sucking, it in that somebody else
had told her was awfully fascinating...lovely, lovely hair.
And such a .mass of it...shs loved to feel the weight of it
dragging mr head back...'Yes, my dear, there is no doubt
about it, you are really a lovely little thing.'

mt even as she leoloed the smile faded from her lips and
eyes. Oh God, there she was back again pinyin the same
old guns - false as ever...

'Oh,' she cried, 'I'm so miserable - so frightfully nicer-
flbheee '9

Probing; into the nind ct Josephine on the day of her tyrannical old

father's funeral, we find a poor, submissive soul:

Josephine had had a moment of absolute terror at the
cemetery, while the coffin was being lowered, to think
that Oh an! Constantia had done this thing without ask-
ing his permission. lhat vould father say when he found
out? For he was bound to find out sooner or later. he
always did. 'Duried. You tin girls had no buriedl' She
heard his stick timsping. Oh, what would they say? What
possible excuse could they oaks? It sounded such an
appallisijly heartless thing to do. Such a wicked advantage
to tales of a person because he happened to be helpless at
the moment. The other people seemed to treat it all as a
matter of course. They were strangers; they couldn't be
expected to understand that father was the very last person
for such a thing to happen to. No, the entire blame for it
all would fail on her and Constantia; And the expense, she
thought, stepping into the tightJ-hittoned cab. When she
had to show him the 31116. What would he say then?

“She hoard him absolutely roaring, 'And do you expect me
to pay for this Limorack excursion of yours‘lilo

Another tocimique of characterisation likewise influenced by psycho.

analysis was Miss Mansfield's subtle use of inprsssionism. By her minute

8 11:14., 9. 259.
9 Ibidsp Pa “Is

10
“The Daughters of the late Colonel," The Short stories of Katherine

flansfisld, p. 469.

 

 

a“

 

stroke. as some to know her people, but the author hss purposely left
then unfinished. It is up to the reader to complete the character
tin-ough her inferences. For sample, in "The Young Girl ," which is a
"dasslinz piece or lepressicnisn,”u the picture is quite static.
There is his young girl on the steps of the casino disdaini'ully looking
miles away as her nether shatters madly on about her friend who just won
thirteen tneusmd at roulette; or again no see her in the hotel at tea
dabbing her lovely nose with a puff iron her gold powder box, at first
refusing the tiniest sales, then suddenly changing her mind as the waiter
tame to go; or still again we see her on the steps of the casino snit-
ing for her mother the is still playing, roulette 3 then for the fraction
of a moment her sophistication vanishes when her older escort, out of
sympathy, offers to hunt ibr her mother...
...Suddenly her cheeks crinsoned, her eyes grew dark «-

for a wet I thought she was going to cry. '1»- lct me,

plense,’ she stannered in a warm, eacer voice. 'I like

it. I love waiting] Really - really I do! 'I'm always

waiting - in all kinds of places...‘
Her dark coat fell open, and her white throat - all her

soft young body in the blue dress '1!“ lilac a flower that

is just emerging from its dark cud.
And with that, Miss Slansfield's characterisation of the young, girl is
finished, and you may males what you like of her.

mother striking amp-ls of impressionistic technique in character
drawing, is fan-ad in "Poison," which is ”an extraordinary little master-

piece in intellectual dram.”NJ It is the story of a woman who pities

herself because of two unhappy marriages uhich she chooses to call cases

11 Bhenke, cg. cit., p. 592.

12 92c Cite. p. “5.

13 Edward Wagenlmect, “Eatherine Mansfield,” English JournalI XVII
(April, 1928). p. 2800

 

—\

 

 

 

 

 

of Paleoning, yet she. herself mtrittingl'y ministers poison to her

lover, Just as her second husband did to her, “a tiny pinch new and

u 14

again until the fatal dose. Thus the character of Beatrice unfolds.

like her on: poison, gradually. It is by bits of conversation. by
incidents , and description all strung together end presented from her
lover's point of vies that as cone to Imev batrice. Prom the first he
was tortured by his love for the languid woman who wore pearls at her
throat and lilies-of-thedvalley tuclsed into her belt...

'Oh, God! What torture happiness was - shat anguish! I
looked up at the villa, at the windows of our room hidden
so mysteriously behind the green straw blinds. has it
possible that she ever came moving through the {green light
and smiling that secret mile, that languid, brilliant
mile that was just for m? :3!» Anot her am around my neck;
the other hand softly, terribly, brushed back my hair.15

He was tortured, too, by her constant queries for the post...

The creak of the gate and the pcstnan's steps on the
gravel drew us apart. 1 was dissy for the moment ...
Beatrice walked over to the cane chairs.

'Ycu go - go for the letters,‘ said she.

I - sell - I almost reeled away. But I was too late.
Annette cane musing. 'Z‘as doc lettres,’ said she.

iiy reckless soils in reply as she handed me the paper
must have surprised her. 1 as tuild with Jo‘ . I threw
the paper up into the air and song out:

'30 letters, darlingl'...16

Ono day as they sip their mrtit‘s together Beatrice bares her unlnppy

marriages to her lover. but sti ll his love never savers and he pledges

his undying love for her - until she subtly administers the final draught

or poison. The following; selection is rich in impressionism:

'I was wondering,‘ she said, Whether after lunch, you‘d
go dam to the post-office and ask for the afternoon letters.
Iould you mind, dearest? Not that I'm expecting one - but -

u The Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield, 1:. 569.

16 lude. p. 566s
1° lbid., p9. 567-8.

 

 

I Just tholght, perhaps - it's silly not to have the letters
if they're there. Isn‘t it? Silly to wait till tomcrrow.‘
She twirlcd the start: of the glass in her fingers. Ker
beautiful head was bent. mt I lifted my glass and drank,
sipped rather - nigged slowly, deliberately, looking at that
darl: heed and thinking of ,lostnen and blue beetles and fare-
Wilt: tint were not farewells and...

Good God! Was it fancy! tie! it wasn't fancy. I.l‘he drink
tested chill, bitter, 3320:. 7

Another technique which iiise iimefic id used to advantage and which
gave a "dic‘oneicn flavour'n‘a to her characterizations was exaggeration.

Her Journal and Letters have shed a good deal of light upon the possible

 

 

influence of 1/10an ufon her. From her letters of 1915 on, it is evi-
dent that Katharine Lianefield was reading Dickens a good deal. On
February 1, 1918, she confided to her husband, "I am not reading Dickens
idly."19 Add 11 the name your she wrote to a friend, "Doesn't Charley
‘u. maize our little men look smaller than over - amd such :encil
sharveners..."20 Like Dickens, the young; modernist often chose the
_!ntographic technique of exaggeration. The ibllowing description from
one of the wtmr'e most brilliant and unfinished pieces, ”A harried
Fan's Story," is a childhood inpronoion of the man's father done in
restrocpectx
...i’ori’ectly bald, polished head, shaped lilo.) a thin egg,

creamy cheeks, little bags under the eyes, large pale cars

1111) hmdloe...21
And the second, a snapshot of his chemist father as he remembers him

at his mother's funeral, in quite in the Dickens' tradition, conveying

emotional significance of a whole character in an image:

17 Ibid., p. 570.

18 Wagenknoot, "Katharine Mansfield and Dickens," Diclaensian, XXVI,
no. 215 (December, 1929), p. 16.

19 Letters, 1, p. 105.
20 Ibide. p. 188s
21 The Short Stories at Katherine unnarioid. p. 616.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That tall hat so glening black and round was like a
cork, covered with black sealing-max, and the rest of my
father was «hilly like a bottle, eith his face for a
label - Deadly Poison...“

Another exsnglc rich in exaggeration and emotional significance in a

single image is Nurse Andrews, whose 'laqh was like a spoon tinkling

against a medicine L:hss."23

Humorous in its exaggerated detail is Alice the Burnell's servant

girl dressed for her afternoon out:

She wore a white cotton dress with such large red spots
on it and so many that they made you shudder, white shoes
Md a loghom turned up under the brim with poppies. Of
course she were gloves, white ones, stained at the fasten—
ings with ironcneld, and in one hand she carried a very
dashed-looking sunshade 1011 she referred to as her

Eerishall.24
Liiosvrisc humorous is the Dicizensien firs. Stubbs with when Alice was

having; tea:

The pale-blue bow on the top of hire. Stubbs 's fair frissy
hair quivcred. She arched her plump neck. What a neck she
had! It was bright pink where it began and then it changed
to warn apricot, and that faded to the colour of a brown

egg and then to a deep cream.25
Miss hansfioid's expert fusion of «mole and pathetic in characterisa-
tion is also Dickensian in tecimique. The washemman's children, Lil
and little o‘lse, from "The Doll's House" are perfect examples:

lec truth was they were dressed in "bits"...Lil, for
instance, who was a stout plain child with big; freckles
cone to school in a dress made from a green art-serge
table-cloth of the Burnolls ' 'with red plush sleeves
from the Logans' curtains. her hat, perched on top of
her high forehead, was a grown-up woman's hat, once the
property of Miss Leaky, the postmistress. It was turned

22 Ibid., p. 620.

23 “The Daughters of the Late Colonel,” 02. 0115., p. ‘87.

24 "At the my,” 02. cit., p. 284.
25 Ibid., p. 28?.

 

 

And

its

up at tho back and trimcd with a large scarlet quill...
It was impossible not to laugh. And her little sister,
our u‘lse, wore a long mite dress, rather like a night-
gown, and a pair of little boy's boots. Brut whatever

our Else wore she would have looked strange. She was a
tiny wish-bone of a child, with crogped hair and enormous
sole-m eyes - a little white owl. Nobody had ever seen
her snilo; one scarcely over s‘r‘oloo. She went through life
holding; on to Lil, with a piece of Lil's skirt screwed up
in her :lllildeeeze

oven the heavenly portrait of Aunt Aggie has Dicksnsian echoes with
mingling of the comic and the gathetict

As a center of fact it was Eire. ‘Js'illisns' Amt Aggie 's
happy release which had nade their scheme possible.
Happy release it was! After fifteen years in a wheel—chair
passing in and out of the little house at haling, she had,
to use the nurse's ex_»rossion 'just glided away at the
last.‘ Gilded away...it sounded as if Aunt Aggie had taken
the vowel-chit with her. one saw her, in her absurd purple
velvet, steering, oerciully among the stars and vmimgering
faintly, so was her terrestrial want, when the wheel jolted
ever a gartloulerly logo 0110.27

Like many of her contemgoraries, James Joyce, D. K. Lawrence, and

1‘. 3. Eliot, Miss Mansfield frequently used symbolism. It was often

through her subtle handling; of symbols that her characters were

revealed - tlmt her truth emerged. fler use of symbolism in characteri-

zation is esgooially skillful, "Like little mirrors her symbols reflect

the dxarsotor from many different and conglomentary aspects, till in

the end, we have a whole personality."28 Stanley Burnell's character

is

not subtly revealed in the symbol of a iiswfoundlsnd dog, for so he

seemed to Linda, his wife:

9.

hung chfomdlund dog, that I’m so fond oi‘ in the day-
time'..11" only he wouldn't jump at her so, and bark so

26 The Short Stories of hathorine Mmlefield, p. 675.

 

27 "Mr. and Hrs. Willime," The Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield,

 

678.
28 Martin Armstrong, "The Art of Katherine Mansfield," Fortnightlx

Review, OXIX (March, 1923), p. 489.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

loudly, and watch her with such eager, loving eyes. He
was too strong for her; she had always hated things that
mshed at her, from a child...2 29

Subtle, too, is the characterisation of Josephine in syabol as the

author sketches the pat‘xoticlut colorless, old epinstcr's ”very light

blue tear":50 that fell on the letter of bereavement and had to be

soaked up with an edge of blotting-gapor. but to proud young Kate, the

servant girl, Josephine and her sister Constantia were just two "old

ubbiesensl

lbst curious of all her symtole, perhaps, are the three table decora—

fl

tions in The Doves' Host," in which the characters of fladerneiselle

endorson, Madame, and the youthful :iilly are revealed:

".0“. the navy , 30131; wd tatl: stood an oval glass dish
decorated \ ith 1 tie gilt swabs. This dish which it was
Horio' s duty to ‘-:ee filled with fresh flowers, fascinated
her...lt reminded her always, as it lay solitary, on the
dark expense, of a little tomb. And one day, passing
through the long windows on to the stone terrace and down
the steps into the garden, she had the happy thought of so
arranging the flowers that they would be apgropriate to one
of the Indies on a future tragic occasion. Her first
creation had been terrible. Tomb of Liademoieelle Anderson

in 'olae‘r; jansies, lily-of-tho valley, and a fri II of helio-

tm £0...
The To :31) of Madame was on the contrary almost gay.
Foolisn little Z'Iowors, half yellow, half lue, hung over

the edge, wisps of green trailed across, and in the middle
there was a large, scarlet roee...It looked flushed and
cheerful, like mother emerging from the luxury of a warm
bath.

Lilly's, of course, was all white. 'r‘ohite stock‘s, little
white rose-buds, vrl th e. serig or two of dark box edging.
It was Iflouor' 3 favorite."2

Raoul Duquette in "Jo He Perle Pas Frencais" is symbolized strangely but

effectively by the mother of Dick, his English friend, who seemed to be

fl
2“ "holudo,n OP. 0113., pp. 257-8.

30 "The Daughters of the Late Colonel," 02. 01+... p. 464.
31 mm” 2). 400.

32 The Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield, p. 629.

 

 

 

 

 

 

swing from her photographs "Out of my sight, you little perfumed fox-
terrier of a Frenchman."“

But most subtle and most brilliant of all lliss llanstield's symbols
are to be found in "The Fly." Humanity is symbolised twice in her last
published story, first, in the poor fly which struggles vainly to free
ltoeli" from great blobs of ink that conctutly fall down upon it,
ier-eding its pmgress, and gradually “allowing; it up. Huncnity is
symbolized, too, in the boss, that curious combination of sadism and
sentin-mtality, xvi-.0, in a fit of temper, intemittently tosses in): upon
a defenseless fly, and MI? fondly admires the insect's pluck, half
sadistieally toys with the wca‘; one‘s life, but always aware of his own
su_erior senor to destroy.

Katherine Iziansfiold's rare sensibility was in itself a technique of
character revelation. :10 be .tor proof of the author's own passionate
awareness can be found than in her words addressed to Lady Ottclins
Liorroll, written July, 1919:

I feel so much .nore sensitive to everything; than I used

to - to [100,219 good or bad, to wliness or beautiful things.

Nowadays when I catch a glinyse oi‘ lonuty, I weep. Yes,

really meg. It is too much to be borne - and if I feel

wielnedness, it hurts so unbearably that I get really ill.
It is dreadful to be so exposed - but what can one do?"4

it is tlxrmifii Elias Mansfield's missing perception that her characters
become real. "10 one has been able to convey more divinely an impression,
a sensation, a state of and, straight from the mind of the author to the
consciousness of the reader."55 Ono critic in paying tribute to the
author's keen sensibility remarked: "The trouble with bliss Umxsi‘ield is

it hurts to read her. She has but to let fall a casual sentence and one

33 Ibid., p. 561.
34 Letters, 1, p. ass

85 flay lamborton Backer, Under 'l‘wmtz (New York, 1932), p. 276.

 

 

 
   

 

 

 

1' priclsed by sons poignant reality. She is a sort of John Keats with
an added feminine ninuteness of intuition and sensibility. She thinks
hen the pores of her skin.”“ In "The Doll's House" the reader is
priclzud by the thoughtless cruelw of children:

To the little Kelveys tho were always outside the social
ring at school, Lena shot forward, 'Yah, yer father's in
priscnl'...This was such a marvellous thing; to have said
that the little girls rushed away in a body, deeply, deeply
excited, wild with joy. Someone found a long rope, and
they began skipping. And never did they skip so high, run
in and out so fast, or do such daring; things as on that
morning.”

With ,wnotracin, honesty the author (103310118 the craftinees of little
girls and their sly actions around Isobel, that they may be invited to
see the Dirnell doll house:

...tho Qirls of her class nearly fought to put their arms
around her, to walk amypgdth her, to beam flatteringly, to
be her sgecial friend...“

Frequently the characters share their authors own aaasing sensibility —
eaecially her footzinine characters, her children, her young girls, her
women. For c>;m;.»le, little Rosin in "Prelude" has the prodigious
sensitivity of the highly imaginative child:

...Sho went over to "die window and leaned against it,
pressing; her hands against the pane.

Fania liked to stand so before the window. She liked
the fooling of the cold, shining; glass against her hot
gains, and she liked to watch the funny white tops that
came on ‘nor fingers when she pressed them hard against
the _.,-uno. .18 she stood there, the day flickered cut and
dar'}: sumo. With the darl. crept the wind muffins and
lwwling. The windows of tho emyty house shock, a creaking
came from the walls and floors, a gloss of loose iron on
the roof banged forlornly. liesia was suddenly quite, quite,
still, with wide open eyes and knees pressed together. She

38 Richard Church, "Sensi’oi lity of Katherine Mansfield," Sgeetator,
OILI (October 27, 1928), p. 597.
37 02- cit., p. 571.

55 Ibid., p. 572.

51

 

 

 

 

   

 

it

 

was frightened. She wanted in call Lottie and to go on
calling all the while she ran downstairs and out of the
house. 3.115 I! was Just behind her, waiting at the door,
at tin head of the stairs, at the bottom of the stairs,
hiding in the passage, ready to dart out at the back
door...""9

The youthful Laura in "The Garden Party' had a passionate awareness for
the beauty of life. Miss iiausfield reveals this in a delicacy of detail
which is altogether characteristic of her exquisite art:

inure put has}: the receiver, flung her arms over her
head, took a deep breath, stretched, and let them fall
...If you stopped to notice, was the air always like
this? Little faint winds were playing chase, in at the
tops of the windows, out at the doors. And there were
We tiny spots of sun, one on the inkpct, one on a silver
photograph franc, playing too. Darling little spots.
Especially the one on the iniqrot lid. It was quite warm.
a warm little silver star. She could have kissed 1t.‘°

It was Laura too who didn't want the brains trees hidden by the marquee
on the day of the garden party:

They were so lovely...like trees you imagine growing on
a desert island, proud, solitary, lifting their leaves
and fruits to the sun in a kind of silent splendour...“

Linda, the highly introverted mother of the fizz-sell children, had but
to {gaze at the aloe in its high grassy bank in her garden when the great
thomy plant rose up like a ship upon a wave:

...Bright moonlight hung; upon the lifted oars lilo water,
and on the green wave giittered the dew.

'De you feel it too'l" said Linda, as she 390109 to her
mother with the special voice that women use at night to
each other as though they spoke in their sleep or from some
hollow cave - 'Don't you feel that it is coming toward us?‘

She dreamed that she was caught out of the cold water
into the ship with the lifted cars and the budding mast.
How the cars fell striking quickly, quickly. They rowed
far away over the top of the garden trees, the paddocks and

39 02s Cite. P. 823.
40

The Short Stories of Katherine Liansfield, p. 557.
41

.3..-

lbid., p. 636.

 

 

 

 

 

 

the dark bush beyond. 'Ah,’ she heard herself cry: ‘i'astsr:
Faster“...

How much more real this dream was then that they should so
back to the house where the sleeping children lay and there
Stanley and Beryl played cribbage.‘

hat perhaps the character of lies kill displays the most uncanny sensi-
bility of all hiss Hansfield's creations, for to this lonely old amid,
a dingy fur-gloss becomes a treasured pet taking on both lite and beauty.
The follovdng lines from ”Miss kill" are highly indicative of the
pathetic old man's sensitivity:

...Little rogue! Yes, she really felt like that about it.

Little rogue biting its tail just by her left car. She

could have taken it off and laid it on her lap and stroked .

it. She felt a tingling in her hands and arms, but that came

from walking, she sup_:osed. And when she breathed, something

light and sad - no, not and, exactly - somthing gentle seemed

to move in her boaonfio

Thus the author reveals character through her various and subtle
techniques of subjectivity, impressionicm, exaggeration, symbolism, and
sensibility.

There are some critics, however, who doubt liiss Mansfield's skill
in characterisation. It is Conrad Aileen's oyinion that Liiss iianstieid
lacked objectivity. He believes she "lost touch with her dramatis
pal-sense by intruding her own personality - therefore her characters

are all “loaf“

Aldous Huxley, too, denies her skill in this field. Her impression-
istic methods he toms merely a ”traveller's-eye view." He holds that

“like Conrad she sees her characters at a distance - as though at another

‘2 "Prelude," on. cit., p. 257.

‘3 oz. 01%., p. 549.

‘4' "The Short Story as Confession," New Regublic, my (Auglst 8,
1923), pp. 308-9.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

0
,1. #-

 

table at a oafe.'. Though he admits her 'brillianes' and “precision,“
”her characters do not seen "genuine'I to him because they are too

"thrilling.“‘s '

Homvor, in the light of most critical cement, lies Iansfield
succeeds in her characterisation. Concerning her diversity in this art,
it has been said "she could enter into the soul of a charemnan so over-
whelmed with tor): and trouble she had never been able to afford the
luxury of a cry, or an old maid whose largest share of hunan affection
was lavished upon a little dingy fur—piece, or a country girl at her
first dance. She could paint a picture in which one breathed the
atmosphere of children at ylsy...she could mice an bray picture of the
soul..."46

Katherine Mansfield built up her story, not only on revelation of
character, but on intensification of emotion or need, as well. It is
through weir very intensity than: her stories, like all "good stories
vibrate - give off sparks ~ luvs bright, memorable colors...and beneath
them lies the glimpse of the norld...with an intensity strong enough to
invade the reader‘s mind and memory, and to become a part of his om
oxgerience."" Ber method is unlike that of the traditional British
novelists who tales up the story at the nomnt of the hero's birth and
slowly c unluct it through a series of incidents toward final catastrophe;
nor is it like the French who choose a moment of crisis. Katherine

Mansfield chooses just an ordinary day. But it is precisely the intensity

of this ordinary day which quickens our emotions. Her “truth is in

‘5 "The Traveller's dye-View,” Notion (London), XXXVI (May 16, 1.925),
Pa 204a

‘6 ”Katherine Msnsfield's Hold on Literary Immortality," Current
Oginion, Lxxxv (Apri 1. 192:), p. 436. '

Welter Iiavighurst, Masters of the Modern Short Story (New York, 1945),
Pa 7111.

 

 

 

 

i in

 

minutes not years, in motions not of a day but of a second, in the

11 or eamth of a sudden need, in the tunes played on the mind by

anything, by nothing at all.“8

let us new analyse the author‘s methods of securing emotional {.71.
intensity by considering the following techniques which she uses with :2
such exquisite art: imagery, characterisation, sensibility, symbolism,
and in;.lication. Again we quot not be unmindful of the fact that it is
Liiss Liaisficld's o‘n creasing sensibility that enhances her various
teciniques, thus producing just the desired degree of emotional intensity, .
which after all creates the illusion of reality for her readers. '
Thro ugh a skillful use of inagery - both material and immaterial,
the author produces her intensification of emotion or mood. The entire .
story of "At the Bay" is built on a series of images. In the following '- <4
image from the story Miss iiansfield has captured from memory the sparkle ‘4
and flavor of a summer morning in New Zealand:

...les sun was rising. It was marvellous how quickly the
mist d'iirmed, sped away, dissolved from the shallow plain, 'L
rolled up from the bush and was gone as if in a hurry to ,
oscugc; big twists and curls jostled and shouldered each '
other as the silvery beans broadened. The far—away sky - | -
a bright, pure blue - was reflected in the puddles, and the r 'l
drogs winning along the telegraph goles, flashed into ‘rfi' f]
points of light. blow the leaping, glittering sea was so ‘52 "
bright it made one's egos ache to look at it... 7

The breeze of morning lifted in the bush and the smell ‘
of haves and wet black earth mingled with the sharp smell r?
of tho sea. :iyriads of birds were singing. A goldfineh :. ;
flew over the shepherd's head and, pcrching on the tiptop .., h
of a 8;)?0], it turned to the cm, ruffling its small breast ,_‘
fufltlnrseee49 “

With minute strohes the antler captures a mood of calm and peace in her fix, Y

rare image of a tree in autumn as it is seen through the eyes of a very '\

‘8 Littell, op . cit... p. 22. f, a;
‘9 02. cit., p. 265.

 

 

 

 

 

 

tired, very unhappy man:

It was an immense tree vim a round, thick silver stem
md a great are of copper leaves that gave back the light
and yet were sombre...“ he looked at the tree he felt

his breathing dis any and he becane part of the silence. L}.
It ceased to grow, it seemed to expand in the quivering 31:}?
heat until the great carved leaves hid the elq, and yet gj‘,
it $3 motionless...Deep, deep, he sank into the silence 4‘

Subtle in its breathless beauty is the image captured from roastery of

the author's own lawn and flower garden in her childhood home at New

Zealand - an image of such perfection as to stir the reader's very

tears that something, might ‘nappen to destroy this perfection: ‘

And after all the weather was ideal. They could not
have had a nore perfect day for a garden-party if they

had ordered it. Windlese, mm, the city without a cloud. f,"

Only tho Line was veiled with a ‘nase of light blue, as 3';
it is sometimes in early sucner. The gardener had been ;
up sinoo dawn, mowing; the lawns and sweeping them, until .1“

the grass and the dark rosettes where the daisy plants

had been seemed to shine. As for the roses, you could not
help feeling they understood that roses are the only 4.4
flowers that impress people at garden-parties; the only .1
flavors that everybody is certain of knowing. hundreds, ,7?
yes, literally hundreds, had come out in a single night; . ‘
the green bushes bowed dorm as though they had been visited ’
by nrchangels.51 "5’

 

, I;

But not only in her oatsrial imagery does the author pro duoe her 'r'ft"
emotional intensity, but in nor izamtcrial imery as well. In a? JV

3 I;

_,,.-ic baring; domestic interiors "no writer of her generation excelled her '1‘ .
x' '.

in this _.:nrticular sort of skill, in the ability without over-emphasis 7237:?

on labored description to establish in the reader's mind the material «3,.
(13

surroundings of a home."52 It is not in her interiors themselves, 0"
hemwor, that she produces her greatest intensity, but thmugh a subtle hi
3,;

fusion of characterisation of person and object. A striking example of “,3;
a,

50 "The Escape," The Short Stories of Katherine Hansi‘ield, pp. 436. :‘s‘
51 "1114: Garden Party," op. cit., p. 554. i,
52 Shanks, op. cit., p. 290. ‘ r}:

 

 

57

such fusion is in the follouing mags of a doll house as seen through
the eyes of the uracil children - especially Kesia'ss

'O-ohl' The Darnell children sounded as though they were
in despair. It was too marvellous; it was too much for them.
They had never seen anything like it in msir lives. All _
tho roons were pepored. There were pictures on the walls, 3
painted on the paper with Lgold francs complete. Red carpet '
covered all the floors except the kitchen; red plush chairs
in tin drawing—room, green in the dining-room; tables, beds
with real bsdolothes, a cradle, a stove, a dresser with tiny
_.~latos and one big jug. But what Xenia lined more than any-
thing, that she liked friglxti‘ally, was the lamp. It stood
in the middle of the dining-rods table, an exquisite little
amber lamp with a white globe. It was even filled all ready
for lightind thoth of course you couldn't light it. But
there was something: inside that looked lilac oil, and that
moved when you shook it...tho lamp was perfect. It seemed
to smile at Kssia, to say, 'I live here.‘ The lamp was
real.5:5

, ‘(r

Another vivid exa 1,210 of the blowing of character with material sur- ,.
roundings to produce intensification of mood is found in “Her First

Ball," an exquisite story 'of a 30qu {girl's first quivering entrance 2'“
upon the world?“ -

A great quivering jet of gas lighted the ladies' room. V'A‘;
it couldn't wait; it was dancing; already. When the doors g
opened sgjnin and there come a burst of tuning from the 3,3;
drill hell, it lealed almost to tho ceiling...Leila press- 3/;
inc close to Meg, looking; over Lisa's shoulder, felt that 2';
even the little quivering; coloured flags strung across the 24
ceiling; were talking-"and the rush of longing she had had ‘ “5
to be sitting, on the veranda of moir- forsaken Lip-country ‘
hows, listening to the baby owls, 'More pork“ in the moon- Mi
ll;'}1t, we changed to a rush of joy so sweet it was hard to 5 ‘
bear alone. She clutched her fan, and gazing; at the gleaming, "i,
golden. floor, the useless, the lasiterxs, the stage at one end ‘1
with its red onr_,-ot and {tilt chairs and the band in a corner, .
she thought breethlossly, 'How Mavenlyg how simply heavenlyi'i’5

There is no more Vivid, more tender emnple of the fusion of character

\u
and object to produce emotional intensity than the young man in 4“

53 "The Doll's House," op. cit., p. 571 :U
64 Becker, 0p. cit., p. 276. 3g“

55 the Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield, pp. 514-5.

 

 

 

 

 

 

'i’ezo'eholhgy‘I who yearns for the very surroundings of his loved one's

homes

'11‘ I shut my eyes I can see this place down to every
detail - every detail...now I come to think of it - I've
never realised this consciously before. Often when I an
away from here 1 revisit it in stiirit - wander about among
your red cimirs, stare at the bowl of fruit on the black
table - and just touch, very lightly that marvel of a
elec.ing boy's head.‘

He incised at it as he spoke. It stood on the corner of
the mutel-gieco; the head to one side down~droog-ing, the
113s parted, as though in his sleep the little boy listened
to some sweet sound...

'1 love em; little boy,’ he :numured...56

A grenonition of impending disaster is caught by the exysrt blending
of lionica's sensibility with that of the interior of an old Parisian
beauty shot in "Revelationsx"

There was not a sound own from Edadane. Only the wind
blev: shaking the old house; the wind hosted, and the
portraits of Ladies of the rongadour Period looked down
and smiled, cunning and sly. Monica wished she hadn't
some. Oh, what a mistake to have come! Fatal] Fatal.
where was George? If he didn't appear the next moment
she would go away. She took off the white kimono. She
didn't want to loci: at herself any-.nore...Thcre was a
tugging feeling at her heart as though her happiness -
her marvellous hagginess - were trying to get free.57

Scmt'mes it is through the sensibilities of her characters alone
that Miss iiansficld achieves her greatest intensity. For example, the
unharjy husband in "The Escape," for a fleeting moment catches a glimpse
of he {Mess in the more mund of a. woman's voice who is singing:

...The war: untro‘xbled voice floated upon the air, and
it mas all part of the silence as he was part of it.
Suddenly as the voice rose, eci‘t, dreaming, gentle, he
mow that it would come floating; to him from the hidden
leaves and his yeaee was shattered. What was happening;
to him? Something-j stirred in his breast. Something dark,
something unbearable and dreadful pushed in his bosom,
and 111m a great weed it floated, rocked...it was warm,

66 ()2e Cite, p. 317s

57 The Short Stories of liathorine Max'usi‘ield, p. 4.29.

 

J13.

I>9‘

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

stifling. Le triei‘. t1) strut, 1'3, 1:» tor at it, run. at
t'w 3120 ”231111; all was over. use» , do-.:_ , he sen}; int)
tlzc 311., 100...?mitlx‘“ for the vice cunt cnzo falling,

gully, ntil he mn- 123011 0 :fgijoi.5"

it is through the sharp sensitiveness of the young Iatilda that the wind
makes her feel that all is over'with life. Indeed she is so unhappy
that she cries at her music lesson that day. And later she and her
brother, their faces white, their eyes excited, deciding to cope with the
wind, together walk out in the stone:

They cannot walk fast enough. Their heads bent, their

leys just touching, they stride like one eager person

throu;h the town down the asphalt sigsag where the fennel

grows wild and on to the ssglnnade...The wind is so strong

that they have to fight their way through it rocking lilac

two old drunkards...s fine spray skins from the water right

across the esplanade. They are covered with drops; the

inside of her «mouth tastes wet and cold...59
And years afterward, upon a gusty day Matilda always associates it with
that same windy day in her youth.whon she cried at her music lesson and
she and her brother, now dead, walked up and down the esylanade.

Like Chekhov, Miss Mansfield is an artist in producing sudden change
of mead through the sensibility of her characters. Like his sixteen
year old Nadya in "After the Theatre" with her suddenly imagined wees,
is Kiss Munsfiold's youthful Leila in "Her First Ball," who is Just as
suddenly node niserable by her plwnp old dancing partner's jest that

some day her youth would be gone!

leila gave a light little laugh, but she did not feel
like laughing. Was it - could it all be true? It sounded
terribly true. Was this first ball only the beginning of
her last ball after all? At that the music seemed to change;
it sounded sad; sad: it rose upon a great sigh. Oh, how
quickly things changed! Why didn‘t happiness last forever?
Forever wasn't a bit too long.

58 0‘2. Cite. 1:). 435.

59 "The Wind Blows," The Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield, p. 218.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'I want to stop,‘ she said in a breathless voice.
The fat man led her to the door.

'lc,’ she said, 'I won't go outside. I won't sit
don. I'll Just stand here, thank you.’ She leaned
against the wall, tapyinl; with her foot, pulling up
her gloves and trying to smile. alt deep inside her
a littlg girl threw her pinafore over her head and
sobbcd. 0

But Lsila's unhapgziness is as fleeting as Nadya's in the sudden reali-
sation that life is very lovely after all. hit‘x Nadya the mood changed
by singly looking about her. With Leila the blissiul mood ems winging
in with a new dancing partner - who was young and handsome:

...hor foot glided, glided. The lights, the asalcss,
the dresses, the pink faces, the velvet chairs, all
boos-no one beautiful flying; wheel. And when her partner
bumped her into the fat man and he said, 'i’ardon,‘ she
smiled at him more radimtly then over. She didn't even
recognise him again.01

Another exawle of swiftly changing mood is that of Laura in "The
Garden Party." Her exuberant, inward happiness has already been shown
in the analysis of her highly perceptive character. But the defter
stroke of the author lies in depicting Laura's sudden change of need
which comes upon looking at the face of a dead young man who was killed
that day - the day of their garden-party. With exquisite control the
author sustains the emotional intensity throughout, thereby capturing
Laura's mid, a mingling of awe - wonder - grief - spiritual awareness:

There lay a young men, fast asleep - sleeping so soundly,
So deeply, that ho was for, far away from them both. Oh,
so remote, so peuoeiul. lie was dreaming. Never wake him
up again. His head was sun}; in the pillow, his eyes were
closed: tlwy were blind under the closed eyelids. He was
given up to his dream. What did garden-parties and baskets
and lace frocks matter to him? He was far from all those
things. He was wonderful, beautiful. While they were laugh-
ing and mile the band was playing, this marvel had come to

6
0 The Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield, pp. 817-8.

‘1 Ibid., p. 518.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

to the ins. Happy...happy...All is well, said that
sleeping race. That is Just as it should be. I an
content.

But all the same you had to cry, and she couldn't go
out of tin room without saging something to him. here
gave a loud childish sob.6

Symbolism she used frequently and sdroitly, not only to reveal her
character but also to produce the desired notional intensity. It is
her truth that often emerges through her symbols. The mddha and the
hand carved screen from India both glay a tremendous part in producing
the notional impact of one of flies Misfiold's most flawless stories,
"The Heighten: of the Late Colonel." The two old sisters, Josephine
and Constantia, are faced with sudden freedom after their father's
death, only to realise that during their long years of submission to
their selfish, tyrannical father that life had passed them by - that
it was over for then - just as surely as it was over for the old
colonel. Their growing perception of this is made charger by the gilt
Budd» and the carved screen “deliberately placed there, yet deliber-

ately out of ,laoe which sghnbolise the wide world that mocks the tight

n83

dotscimont of their lives. Taut with emotional intensity is the

following selection, rich in its perception and symbolism:

Conatantia...wallssd over to the mantel-piece to her
fowrito Buddha. And the stone and gilt image whose
exile always gave her such a queer feeling, almost a
gain and ygt a pleasant gain, seemed today to be more
than smiling. lie knew something] he had a secret. ’I
1219?. seszofiiing that you don't hmw,‘ said her Imddha.
Oh, that was it, what could it be? And yet she had
always felt there v.ns...aonethinc...

Jntil tho barrel-organ stooped playing Constantia
stayed before the Buddha, tmnderlng, but not as usual,
not vaguely. This time her mnder was like longing.
She ro-.2mberod the times she had come in here, crept

62

op. cit., p. 548.
so

Havighurst, cg. cit., g. x.

81

"e.:<“.-_

 

z-sr

 

 

out of bed in her nightgown when the moon was full, and
lain on the floor, with her arms outstretched, as though
she was crucified. Why? The big, pale noon had made her
do it. The horrible dancing figures on the carved screen
had leercd at her and she hadn't minded...1'here had been
this other life, running out, bringing; things home in bags,
getting things on approval...arranging father's trays and
trying not to annoy father. an: it all seamed to have
happened in a kind of tunnel. it wasn't real...fihat did
it mean? What was it she was always writing? What did
it all lead to? Now? How?

She turned my from the Diddha with one of her vague
gestures...“

Often the author's symbols fore the very core of her story, as in
"Bliss,“ "Elias :5rill,‘I and “The Doll's House." It is the flavoring
pear tree in "Bliss" which symbolizes the love that two women share
for one mm. The author achieves her emotional heightening by a

brilliant over-intensification of gictorial effect of the symbol

itself:

And the tee women stood side by side looking at the
slender, flowering tree. Although it was so still, it
second like the flame of a candle, to stretch up, to
point, to quiver, in the bright air, to grow taller as
they gazed - almost to touch the rim of the round, silvery
liven.

lbw long did they stand there? Both, as it were,
caught in that circle of uneartl'xly light, understanding
each other perfectly, creatures of another wor 1d, and
wondering; what they were to do in this one with all this
blissful treasure that burned in their bosons and dropped
in silver flowers from m1:- hair and hand-:66

Forming; the very heart of the story is Miss mill's dingy fur-piece
whim sym‘wlizee everything that life has denied the pitiml old

spinetor - beauty - riches - affection. And! when the well-dressed
young coug'lo joor at her precious neck-piece, Miss Brill's pathetic
world of beauty and riches and affection crumbles into bits. Sue-

taining her emotional intensity to the very last nerd of her story,

64

02¢ Clea. pp. ‘81-'31:
65 -

02. 01‘s. p. 3‘7e

 

..‘p‘

-‘ we»: "2 in"? .

3'1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

15138 .m‘sfla ld _'.ic".;uros t':.-.- 01.3. woman i'orlcraly ln‘ing her fur-11000

Lac;- 1'.'. its e:., that; ui“.;..-r.‘.-)-vu...' .ut '.':. e'x she put the lid on she

. . . . . 'JU
tho-.1 ..: 5.; ism-c. so zeta". z, or '--‘~. ."

rer?.n_-: 2.3.0 "wot ,zolgz ...-1': of all the author's symbols is the reel

lit..1e- ln- - 1:: ""he Lnll's .i-mse ' the ox.uisl'uo littlcs. 3:31.191. lam.“ fit'n
s '1
the ~.-.;x.'-.‘-.;c 51:20, which ro.roee‘.ts ‘wnuty to ,oor little flee, the
v:r.s...:ru:3::nx'= 3.11:1. All of their fi‘lU'ldl had bee-1 allowed to see the
3 .r-. )113' 1.911 .souse - cxccg» " to.) little llelvefi, VINO vurc never included

1:1 :5. .'..-J dug hurls; 5.13%.; t1..- .orLI..:l-‘. :‘1 treasure to {:10 little

-..-..

:u‘;o-...;‘..s, ""5 the; aura 313.: s nee-C. 93:11 9;: .1 at deal. The nut--or

clue: Li; .ix): - int-J. s .55.;1...E L.i1;u..5 it; '23: 3.".'J‘.'.l‘l;‘ the -J.-.oi;io.:o.l oi'i'oct

+ t

...I .....L

.z ..zu :2"... .: . Ln) llt'Ll-o ...- ‘.v-":; - oer-ecinlly our also.

..Z-m". i...e l-elve_ s were well out oi‘ oi ht oi‘ Burnells',
they em; .iwm to root on a big; red draln—- lye by the
1.1-..- 3.‘ in road. ...l's OJOUL'G \wJI‘O stil I‘ul urning; she
tool-s off the hat wit-.1 t::e .1uill and held it on her knee.
.‘Jruu.'.1’.":'le, loobod. over the ha,- -_-addocl;s, :aet t"
creex, to tie grou; of we the whore Lenin's cows stood
1.1. - ,--_'l s 1 1:3...11‘L'od...

Ar =5-‘:ztl'_.' our .5130 wuio ed u; close to Zmr sister. But
:.‘-..- ..ul f~r,_ at to: . its cross lujy. 39.0 got cut a
'."..: .‘r 9.1.1:: tro.:-J.1 1:;-r sister's quill; she sailed. her
Piaf-4 55.10.

'1 cos: the little luxg,’ she out-.1 softl;l...67
.12 33‘; Jf all files Ehusi'ield's tookxiuuus to “reduce euntlondl
'. . . '-.=.-. , 4;» iv; her story its r.m:s:-n._', is her skillful use of

. lioa‘cl-z-z, T."l‘.C-El is, after all, the natural result of her own rlouly
;:erc._:tiv; .. ;;;1. "To red-.1 her stories can be an experience in discern-
"not, for Law reader is culled u;von,"cu and the story's siLnlficcnce

may do_.m-; .. . ..Ls mu eonsloility - ‘ .Lis m1 ex \orienoc. Se ligatly

6’5 "shoe arm." a.-- oi'bu 554-

67 OD. 01t., l}. 577.

8‘3 Zuwlghurct, °|' . cit" :. viii.

65

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

is her handling; of inplicetion thst the undiscorning resder is deceived

by her spparcnt trivislity, "yet when she seems st first glsnce nest
trivisl, she is reslly most profound."69 So firmly do her impllcstions
csgture the mind of the perceptive reader that they not only prick him
with life's guignsnt realities, but awake in him 's renewed sense of
life as a vivid and pusionste fixing."7o 01' the young suthor's skill-
ful handling of implication, ~Hills Gather remixed: "Katherine Mansfield
had something of the gift which is one of the rarest things in writing -
and qaito the most gracious - tho cwrtone" which is too fine for the
printing press, yet somehow cams through v.1 thout “1.71

It is at til-3 end of "The Garden Party" that Ziiss Mansfield's
in;.licati:ns strilas deepest. through the death of s mrimsn than; day,
s poor young carter who lived in time lane nearby, inure. suddenly become
sure of the diversity of life and the inovitsbility of desth, and
though the young, girl caught s glimmering of beauty — even in desth - as
she 10925021 upon his ‘oacei‘ul young face, she was still bewildered cc to
just what life was. With exquisite rectrsint the author handles Laura‘s
sgiritual awakening by her inerticulats bewilderment - which is after
all our om inartlcnlato bewilderment...

...Shc stoked, 51x0 loolwd at her brother. 'Isn't life,
she utmmored, 'lsn't life -' But whet life was she

couldn't 02:-lain. ifo matter. he uite understood.
'lsn't it, darling?’ said Iaurie.'2

69 Wugenknoot, "Katigcriuo Elastic 1d," English Journsl, XVII (April,
1928), p. 278.

7° J. w. Krutch, "Impendorabls values," Ration, OXNIII (February 20,
1929). p. 211.

:2 op. cit., 9. 137.

02. Cite. 5). “Se

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1n “Revenue...“ on. implications of desth sre my before it 1. setu-

slly mentioned. Ionics noticed thst Keane's fsce wss whiter then ever
end that rims of bight red showed sround her eyes; even the rings on
her pudgy fingers did not spsrkle todsy, but were cold snd deed lib
gloss; there wss sn ominous stillness in the shop, in spite of the wind
thst shook the pcrtrsite on the fill] George brushed her hsir. and even
the rhythm of the brushing felt nournful, the silence second to some
drifting dom 1112s flakes of mow. When Monies reslly lesrns thst
George's first child hes died that morning, she begins to cry and runs
out of s shop into I. tsxi. Fleeing from the unplessmtncss of death,
she orders the driver to Prince's wlsaro she will forget and dine with
Monsieur. mt suddenly they psss a flower shop full of white flowers...
Oh, what s perfect thought. Lilies-of-the-vclley, and

white pensies, double nhite violets and white velvet

ribbon...Frem sn unknown frimd...Fron one who understands

...For 0. Little Girl...$he tapped sgsinst the window, but

the driver did not her; end, snyww, they were st Prince's
already.“5

lsnd in lionioa's perfect thomht the inglicstions strike deep . to the
ver/ core of linden weskmss, for the render sees s11 of his perfect
thoughts - all of his best intentions thst somehow never msterislise -
md always for the best reasons, like Lionics's...”the driver did not
hesr; and anyway they were at Prince's slresdy.‘I

The inglioationo in many of the author's stories concern frustrstion,
futility, tho utter oorruytion of life itself. That this was one of her
two nine in writing is ovidont from the following excerpt of s letter to
0. friend written February 5, 1918:

I have two ld.ckoff's in the writing: gone...the other...

is my old original one, and had I not known love,

75 OR. Gite; p. ‘310

 

n

 

1% would hsvs been my ell. lot hete or destruction (both
Ire boneeth contempt es reel motives) but sn extremely deep
mes of hopelessness, of everything donned to dissster,

sheet wilfully, stupidly...e cry scsinst corruption - dist

is absolutely the neil on the heed. Bot s protest - s cry.

And I mean corruption in the widest sense of the word, of

course...“

Xethsrine Liensfie ld‘s cry sgsinst corruption is keenly hesrd tin-sigh
the mious inpllcstions of “The Deughters of the late Colonel" end
"The Fly."

It is in the closing scene of the story, where Josephine and her
sister Constantin stsnd together in s darkened room - in which even
the sun had to thiove its my - that the overtones ere deepest, that
the author's cry sgsinst corruption is ehsrpest. Their tether, the
dco_ntic old colonel is deed - but even now they ere not free, these
two. Their youth is gone end with it ell thst life hes to offer
youth - confidence - romsncc - heppiness. The implicsticns of their
grvving perception of ell of these things, together with their fine].
commotion of the futility of life itself, ere linitless in their
depth and ~rolgmmcy.

‘Joro bitter yet in its cry against corruption is "the Fly,” the
eutlior'c last published story, which hes been sptly termed 'en
sllegorioal indictrent of life."76 The lste Edward O'fi'ien selected
her little masterpiece as one of the fifteen finest short stories ever
written because Lao considered it "as inevitable es Time," and sltliaugh

he believed it to be "an untrue story" he sdmitted it ”has s cry in it

which hes never been stilled from age to sge."76 T0 W “RPOTWPflW

74 Letters, I, p. 106.

75 "Khthorine Mbnsfiold'slnald on Literary Immortslity," .2. 01s.,
9. ‘57.

7° ”The Fifteen Finest Short Stories,“ Forum, LXXIX (June, 1923),
De 908.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

feeder nothing heppens but tbst s fly is killed by s men who tosses

in]: upon it, but to the perceptive resder the ioplicsticns strike to
the very roots of life. In the boss, who is pricklsd by his ovn guilty
conscience and es s remit ssdisticelly tortures s fly, the resder sees
the devils thst lurk benesth the surface of men's consciousness. In
the fly and its vein strug;,_;le to free itself from the great blobs of
ink that descend on it intermittently, the reader sees the struggle of
hmvmxlty meiuet s cruel fete that Exes deemed it from the start. With
microscopic detail liiss Mansfield artfully degicts the str 1116 of
Immunity, in the following glicture of the fly:

Help! Help! said those struggling: logs. But the sides of
the inkgot were not and slippery; it fell beck again end
began to swim. The boss took up a pen, picked the fly out
of the ink, and shook it on to 11 piece of blotting paper.
For a fraction of s. second it lsy still on the dork pstch
thet oosod round it. Then the front legs waved, took hold,
and, pulling its smell sodden body up it begsn the inmonse
task of cleaning the ink from its wings. Over and under,
over and under, went s leg slang a. wing, es the stone goes
over and under s scythe. Then there wee s. psuse, mile the
fly, seeming; to stand on the tips of its toes, tried to
exyand first one wing and then the other. It succeeded st
last, and sitting; down, it began, like s minute out to elect:
its face...the horrible dzmyer was over...it us resdy for
life agein77

The result of men's sadism and the result of hmnsnity's struggle are

told silks with stark brevity:

'Ycu artful little b...’ And he actually had the brill-
iant notion of breathing on it to help the drying process.
All the same there was something; timid and week about its
efforts new, and the boss decided that this time would be
the last, as he dipped the pen into the inkpot...

'Come on,‘ said the boss. 'Look slurp!’ and he stirred

it with his pen - in vein. Nothing happened or was likely
to happen. The fly was deed.73

77 02. cite. p. 601'

75 Ibid., p. e02.

 

Despite the uthor‘s my inplicstions of some form of life's
corruption, there ere else inplicstions of joy - end very often in tin
sens story. For cxsnple, in "Bliss” Bsrths is deliriously hsppy es the
story opens, and likewise Kiss Brill so she sits in the Jsrdins
Publiqucs with her treasured little fur about her neck. So too is tours.
in "The Garden Port-y," who on the zooming; of the fete csn sesrcely eon-
tsin her youthful exhilirstien. That the expression of joy m likewise
en sin of the author is vividly proved from the following excerpt of her
letter written in February 5, 1918:

I have two )dclocff's in the writing game. One is joy -

reel joy...thet sort of writing I could only do in some

perfectly blissful way at lessee. Then something delicste

and lovely seeds to even before my eyes, like s flower

without thought of a frost or a cold breath, knowing thst

all about it is warm end tendernu‘md that I try ever so

hrmbly to express...79
The most exquisite example of Kstiwrine Liensfield's hwnble expression
of reel joy is found in ”The Doll's house." This posthmnously printed
tsle is captured from memory and in it "there is s nscic one does not
find in ixor other stories."80 Miss Msnsfield‘s most reel expression
of joy is not done through )nr delicacy of detsil, such ss Lsurs's joy,
or Bortha's, or Miss m-ill's. It is done in one mssterful strobe -
which is nothing; more than the humble utterance of little flies, the
mermrmwn's child who has at last been permitted to glimpse the
treasure in the doll's house and whispers softly to her sister: ’I
seen the 11mm 1333:3081 Such simple words but in their overtones lies

ell the rsinbowed ecstasy of childhood in its nsturel response to beauty.

Yet even greater in implication is the humble little utterence, for in

79 UP. cit., p. 106.

so Octher, cg. cit., p. 157.
81 OE. Cite. p. 577.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

its “PW the beauty of the world triusphs over ugliness. That the

author herself believed firnly in this philosophy cannot be denied,
for in a letter to a friend written in ”arch, 1922, she declared:
'Beauty triumphs over ugliness in life. That's what I reel."82

Thus the author achieved her intensification of emotion and mood
by her expert handling of the following techniques: imagery, characteri-
sation, sensibility, eynholisn, and implication.

Perhaps no better explanation of her meticulous craftsmanship can
he ibund anymore than in her letter of January, 1921:

It's a queer thing how craft comes into writing, I mean

dots: to details. Par ample. In 'Miss filli,‘ I mess

not only the length of every sentence, but even the sound of

every sentence. I chose ti'e rise and fall of every paragraph

to fit her. And to fit her on that day. At that very

nmnent. After I had written it I read it aloud - nunbere of

tines - just as one tould play over a musical composition -

trying to get it nearer and nearer to the expression of Miss

hill - until it fitted her...I often wonder if other writers

do the same thing...“ a thing has really come off it seems

to no that there nusn’t be one single word out or place, or

one word that could be taken out. That's how I aim at
writing.85

.0l...COO000......O0..........OOOOOIOOCOOO...0.0.0.... O. ...

The excellence of Katherine Hensfiold's short stories then lies
undeniably in her rare craftsmanship - a craftsmanship of form which
was attained thr) ugh its scorn of plot and climax, its economy of word
and phrase, and through its utter freedom of all traditional toms - a
craftsmanship of matter based upon the author 's personal sense of truth,
mich mirrored actuality through a delicate blending of character
revelation and emotional intensity, which in turn was produced by her

expert handling of various and subtle techniques, all or them greatly

82 Letters, 11, pp. 462-3.
3‘ Ibido. pp. soc-31.

 

 

7O

enhlmecd by the author's om waning sensibility.
Thus it in that her pieces emerge, trillimt and flawless, from
the ekillful hands or a motel-craftsman - these jewels of the short

story world.

 

 

 

 

 

in

 

 

 

 

 

 

PAR! IV
SIMOGMPHY
Aibn, Geared, "The Short Story as Confession,“ New Republic, :’.
XXIV (Auguet 8, 1923), pp. 307-9. ‘7‘-..
Armstrong, llartin, ”The in of Katherine Mansfield," Fortnightly "ii; ;
Revise, an (nu-ah, 1923), pp. 434-90. .‘
(
husbanp, Harold, 'Kathorine lhnsfield's Career,“ Saturday Review L
of Literature, 1 (September 30, 1985), p. l“.
Becker, Hay Lamberten (cd.), Under meaty, New York, 1932.
Dell, Margaret, "In lemory of Katherine Mansfield," Booknan, WI
(January, 1935), pp. 35-46.
Boyle, Katherine, 'Katbrine Bansi‘ield, A Reconsideration,“ XCII _
(October 20, 1937), p. 309. I.
bee-star, Dorothy and Angus Burrell, Dead Rsclaeni s in Fiction, .
In York, 192.. ~. ,
5-4 I .
eeeeeee ”(I‘m Fiction, NOW IOI‘k. 1934s I - 'II.
holes, Van’flyck, "A Story-Teller's Letters," Outlook, on (February 5:? +9
20, 1929), 9. 311. ré
Bram, Grace 2., “Katherine Hansfield's Quest," Boolcuan, LXI ..1
(August, 1925), pp. 687-91. :;
,ri- I
Gather, W111i, Net Under Forty, 110w York, 1956. '3 . i
I z, .
Cerf, Bennett L. (ed.), Great Modern Short Stories, New York, 1942. 71'5"
Chekhov, Anton, The Black Honk. Translated from the Russian by "g.
R. :3. C. long, 5;; 70:5, 1516, J. I“
The mugs. Edited by Edward Garnett, New York, 1916. fig.”
....... Short Stories by Anton Chekhov. Translated from the Russian ‘54“
by Cons es ne , or , . I153
church, Richard, “Sensibility of Katherine Mansfield," Spectator, ‘.K
on: (October 27, 1928), p. 897. sex
“In”. JO'OPh. Th0 Dieter Looks at Literature, New York, 1925. ”If ‘3
I")’

eeeesee "The Greatest Ebert Story Writer," Liters! Di 0"“. 1m
(March 17, 1923), pp. 32-3.

I" {|

 

 

 

 

 

Cox. Sidney, “Fnctldiousnoss of Katherine Mansfield," Science Revie',

 

31111 (113.11 1951), pp. 158-69.

Crawford, John, "Katherine minefield Roconsidered,‘ Nev York Book
Review, III (January 31, 1926), p. 2.

 

 

Daie-xes, David, The Novel and the modern World, Chicago, 1938.

 

a. la liars, Walter, “811») Athenaem, No. 4734 (January 21, 1921),
p. 37

 

Drew, Blissteth, The deern Havel, New York, 1926.

 

Eliot, Thomas Stems, After Strum 0 Code. A Primer of lbdern hares ,
New York, 1034.

Linc'l'olenedia kitannica, XIV, “Katherine minefield," London, 1942.

Could, Gerald, The Ehrlich Hove]. of Today, How York, 1926.
Harper, George, utoer .inprociations, New York, 1987.

Bavighurst, Walter (ed.), Ziactore of the i'odcrn Short Story, New York,
1945.

Hubbell, George, "Katherine Mansfield and Koala," Sennee Review,
W (July. 192?). P“. 326.“.

 

Huxley, Aldous, "The Traveller's Bye—View," Nation (London), XXXVI
(May 16, 1925), pp. 205-4.

 

“Katherine Hanefield," Ration (London), x111 (January 20, 1923),
l—e 609

 

"Katherine Hansfield's Hold on Literary Immrtality," Current Opinion,
IJDLIV (April, 1925), p. «as.

Krutolx, J. 11., “The Garden Party," 11.21.21, on (July 26, 1922),
L1. 100.

....... "Ingonderable Values," Nation, CXVIII (February 20, 1929),
yp. 210-11.

Kunits, Stanley and Hayeroft, Howard, Twentieth Century Authors,
New York, 1942.

Littell, Ibbort, ”Kafimrine Mansfield,“ New Republic, 120111! (February
28, 19:50), :3. 22.

bemoan, Amy, "Katherine manefleld’s Books and their Publishers,"
Saturday Review of Literature, XIII (November 23, 1935), p. 48.

Isis, 8. P., Some Modern Authors, London, 1930.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

knly, John Hetthe'ej end Rickert, with, Centenarfl kitieh
Literature, New York, 1928.

lenetield, Kstherine, ”A Foiry Story," Colliers, 1.1111 (October 20,
1923), pp. 13-33.

 

....... Elise end other Stories, New York, 1920.

eeeeeee m Burden 5252, h York, 1922.

eeeeeee the lb“.' IbUt md 0m? storX... Edith by Jo mddhhn
Hurry, 5; 101-5, 1523.

....... Pom. dditod by J. Hiddleton Hurry (Published by Constsble,
Iondon, [523), New York, 1924.

 

....... The Little Girl and other Stories. Edited by J. Middleton
Hurry, 5!; York, 152;.

....... In e Semen Ben-ion. 3dited by J. Middleton flurry (Her
first collection, mofi wee brought out by Stephen Swift,
London, 1911), New York, 1926.

um... Journel of Katherine Menei‘ield. adited by J. Middleton
My. 03", 9 O

eeeeeee the letters of Katherine Mansfield, 2 vole. Edited by J.
MiddleEn My (P11513553 ES" Bonsai-Sh, London, 1928), Rev

York, 1929.

eeeeese SObOWd Short Stories Of huntine m.f1.1de Edited by
J. m 017021 ‘ 0". O I

....... The Alec. iA‘vditeci by J. Middleton Blurry (out of print),
New York, 1930.

....... The Short Stories of Katherine Bienei‘ield. Edited by J.

MiddleEn EFF-y (oompre'I'Fnere editfin), Fe" York, 195?.
....... The Songbook of Katherine Mansfield. Edited by J. Middleton
Murry, ork, .

......o Stories Ketterine Mansfield. Introduction by Merjorie
Kimen Wings (moot recent reprEt), Cleveland, 1946.

Monte, Ruth Elvieh, Critical Bibliofim of Katherine Men-field,

London, 1931

hate, Ruth Elvieh end mirry, J. Middleton, The 1.1:. of Katherine
Venetiold, London, 1933.

longhorn, Somerset W. (ed.), Introduction to lodern En lieh and
American Literature, milsaeIpEIe, I533.

 

 

 

lhugm, Somerset I. (ed.), Tellers of 2.1... new York, 1939.

Xeurcie, Andre, Proghetsend mete, lee York, 1935.
here, Virginie, Dietiguiehed Women Writers, lee York, 1930.

loom, levels, hiberoulosie end Genius, Chic-go, 1940.

 

lorry, Hiddleton J., 'threcte from e Journel " Yele Review, 1m
(October, 1923, Jenuery, 1921), pp. m5; 303-13.

....... "Kethcrim Hensficld,‘ Liters-1 Review, III (Februery 17, 1923),
PP. “1-2.

....... ”The leerineee of Inn Bunin,‘ Diel, LEVI (Pebruery, 1924),
pp. 199-97.

 

O'Rien, Bdeerd J., "The Fifteen Finest Short Stories,' Form, max
(June, 1928), p. 9°8e

Orege, A. R., ”Talks with Ketherine venetian," Century CI! (November,
192‘). pp. 36“0e

Overton, Grant (ed.), Greet lbdern Short Stories, New York, 1930.

 

Ebrter, Ketherinc A., "Art of Esther-ins Mansfield," Hetion, CXLV
(Oetober 25, 1937), pp. 436.61.

 

Seuret, Denis, “Visit to Gourdyev,‘ Living go, CCCXLV (Jennery, 1934),
PPe 428-9.

Schneider, Blieebeth, 'Kstherine Henei‘ield end Chekhov," Modern

253° Hotee, 1. (June, 1935), pp. 394-7.

Checks, deerd, "Kstherine Henei‘ield,” Iondcn Korey, m1 (anuery,
1928)s PPO 280-93o

 

Sherman, Stusrt, Gritieel Nbedeute, New'York, 1926.

Storm. Colton (ed.), keericen nook Prices Current, New York, 19.1-19.5.

Sulliven, J. m, I'8tory Writing Genius," Atheneeun, No. 4692 (April 2.
1920), Po “7e

Sednnerton, Freak, The Georgian Scenes A Literary Penoreme, New York,
1934.

 

Tomlineon, 11. 15., "Contemporaries," Neticn (London), 1m: (June 20,
1925.

Hegenlmect, Edward, "Katherine Mansfield,” 2n lieh Jeurnel, XVII
(April, 1928), pp. 272-84.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

menkneet, Edvard, "refineries lhnstield end Dickens,‘ Diekensien,

 

m. lbs 213 (December, 1929). pp. 1502‘s
mu, Ilelie, Demhter of Time, New York, 1942.

erlf, Virginie, "Journel of Ketherine )hnsi'ield,‘ Hetion (London),
11.1 (September 10, 1927), p. 750.

 

Bight, Hrs. Frenk 1.1m , ”Lest Deye of Katherine Menstield,‘ boned,

 

 

 

 

 
      

 
  

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