Katherine Mansfield:

Subjective and sensory impressions of characters

by W.T.J.S. Kaviratne

Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry, better known as Katherine Mansfield, was born on October 14, 1888 in Wellington , New Zealand which was then under the British Colonial Administration.

Harold Beauchamp was her father who was a successful businessman in Wellington, New Zealand and became the Chairman of Bank of New Zealand.

Her mother was Annie Burnell who was always suspicious and tyrannical in her attitudes and since her childhood Katherine Mansfield was thoroughly disappointed with the nature of her middleclass parents.

Wellington where Katherine Mansfield was born and bred was known then as 'the empire city'.

Education

She received her education at Wellington Girls' College and during her school career she excelled in the skills of writing and she had contributed her maiden short stories first to the college magazine.

At 19, Katherine Mansfield left New Zealand for England in 1903 and when she was in England she attended Queen's College, London.

She had extended her travels to Germany and Belgium and again she returned to New Zealand.

The people who lived in Wellington imitated the British life styles and advocated the capitalist and traditional attitudes to the utter disgust of Katherine Mansfield. Once gain in 1906 she left for England.

According to her diary entries she had scrutinised the discrimination against the native Maori people in New Zealand.

Some of the well-known works of Katherine Mansfield are:

In a German Pension (1911), Bliss and other Stories (1920), The Garden Party (1922), The Dove's Nest (1923), Montana Stories (1923), Poems (1923), Something Childish (1924) and Aloe (1930).

Themes

One of the major themes highlighted in her short stories is the effect of discrimination and the hierarchy of class distinction on the people of colonial New Zealand which bears closer parallelism to the life led by Mansfield herself during the period she spent with her parents in Wellington, New Zealand.

Mansfield's biographer, Angela Smith referring to the issue of discrimination and how it triggered Mansfield to exploit this theme in her short stories said:

"It was her childhood experience of living in a society where one way of life was imposed on another and did not quite fit , that sharpened Modernist Impulse to focus on moments of disruption or encounters with strange or disturbing aspects of life."

In the short story Doll's House Mansfield vividly portrays the theme of class discrimination prevailed in colonial New Zealand and worst of all the sadistic pleasure the adults and parents obtained through the inhumane treatment of the less fortunate and the marginalized communities of New Zealand.

Discrimination

This class discrimination was not confined only to the elderly people corrupted by colonial mentality but children brought up in such an unhealthy home atmosphere is a striking theme in Doll's House.

According to one of the biographers of Mansfield, Anthony Alpires, Mansfield had modelled her characters Kelvey girls Lil and Else Mc Kelveg as daughters of a washerwoman.

"It is possible that Mansfield like Kezia tried to stand up for these girls in school."

Both the teacher and the schoolmates of Kelvey girls ostracised them in their school in very inhumane manner and even the teacher was in the habit of using a sarcastic smile and a different tone of voice for them thus instigating the other children against Kelvey Girls.

Social Inequality, abuse of money to gain power over others, and injustice are some other themes featured in Doll's House.

According to the genre of modernist literature, narrator's role is restricted and characters and settings are suggested or implied rather than defined by the writer and these Modernist traits are found in the writings of Mansfield.

Social issue

Scenic beauty of nature is effectively blended in her short stories while exposing the burning social issues through the behaviour of her characters.

Some literary critics are of the opinion that the short stories of Mansfield comprised the themes and concepts expounded in empiricism, epistemology and evanescent reality.

In the 20th century the novelists experimented on an innovative technique to replace the omnipresent narrator by a character in a novel or a short story who could recount what was seen, felt and heard.

The characteristics of Impressionism such as the incidents unfolding in the story are seen, felt or heard by the characters without the intervention of a third person narrator are also found in the short stories compiled by Mansfield.

In 1922, she had written in one of her scrap books with reference to her aesthetic views " a writer should be firm in the control of the narrative design."

Reality

According to literary impressionists , reality cannot be analysed but can only be intuitively perceived.

The central theme of Mansfield's short stories can be identified as the disparity existed between reality and illusion.

Mansfield hardly appeared as the narrator of her short stories but entered into the heart of the characters.

In the short story In the Little Governess child girl's feelings and vision of the surrounding world was Expressed as:

"Oh dear, how she wished, that it wasn't night time."

In the creation of setting, Mansfield used to blend the scene and the inner feelings of her characters.

The short story The Wind Blows the setting was created, "Suddenly, dreadfully - she wakes up.

What has happened?

Dancing

In the First Ball, While dancing, an old experienced man make Lira realise that the first ball was but the beginning of the last ball".

The stories based on children Mansfield recollections of her own childhood had been portrayed. Children for the first time get an impression of the dark side of society in The Garden Party.

Just after the World War 1, people questioned about the future of humanity and writers instead of focusing on nature resorted to Modernist approach.

Following the trend of Modernist writers, Mansfield also resorted to focus her fiction in exposing inner-self and consciousness of humanity.

Pleasures

Joys and fears of childhood, pleasures and pains of adults, aspirations and frustrations are some of the themes in the short stories of Mansfield.

All sorts of social ills are exposed through the 'stream of consciousness' irony, satire and comparisons.

In tune with the concept of Modernist literature, even in Mansfield's short stories, beginning, middle or end (introduction, conflict and resolution) are not found.

Using the modernist literary technique, Mansfield paid much attention on the creation of the characters and the mood rather than on the plot of the story.

She purposely avoided making any comments on the behaviour of characters of her stories and left the judgement to the readers.

Laura Sheridan the central character in the short story The Garden Party, was eagerly expecting the party but shocked to hear about the sudden death of next door neighbour due to an accident.

Laura had a great sympathy towards working class but her sister Jose identifies such feelings as extravagant and her mother finds them as amusing.

"Entering the working-class streets would expose the children of Shridan family to disease and foul language."

Fiction

The female protagonists in Mansfield's fiction are exposed to the realities, complexities and the darker perspectives of life and humanity.

Laura in the Garden Party was exposed to the reality of death in the neighbourhood while the other unsympathetic members of her family and guests were rejoicing at the party.

In a German Pension Mansfield at 20 had written an anthology of satirical short stories after her visit to Germany in 1911 while she was staying in a guest house in Bavaria.

These semi -autobiographical short stories were based on the behaviour on the patterns, eating habits, prejudices of the British and mannerisms of contemporary Germans.

When Mansfield was in England she was enlightened by the influence of the leading modernist literary figures of the calibre of D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey and Bertrand Russel.

Referring to the themes of Mansfield ,literary critic Sylvia Berkman argues " It is difficult to to define a precise theme in Mansfield's short stories.

Mansfield's themes are essentially preoccupations with loneliness, and frustration with sexual maladjustment with purposeful sufferings with falseness, ostentation and sterility of sophisticated life with denial of emotional fulfilment to all classes of men. "