Katherine Mansfield and Conceptualisations of the Self

Katherine Mansfield and Conceptualisations of the Self Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of English Literature At the University of Northampton 2018 Louise Jane Edensor © Louise Jane Edensor 2018 PhD This thesis is copyright material and no quotation from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. Abstract The thesis aims to show how Katherine Mansfield’s desire to discover aspects of the self shaped her strengths and distinctiveness as a writer, particularly in the development of her own modernist aesthetic. Mansfield’s letters and notebooks often betray a preoccupation with issues of the self. In one notebook entry she exclaims, ‘if one was true to oneself . True to oneself! Which self? Which of my many – well, really, that’s what it looks like coming to – hundreds of selves’ (CW4, 349). By examining this and many other scattered references to the self throughout Mansfield’s letters and notebooks, this thesis aims to uncover the relationship between Mansfield’s personal comments and questions on the self and the development of her literary techniques. The beginning of the twentieth century, when Mansfield was writing, saw many advancements in science and technology as well as new psychological theories popularised by William James and Sigmund Freud. These theories added to a discourse on the psychological make-up of the individual as modernity caused a crisis in understanding the construction of the self, calling identity into question. By examining these theories, this thesis provides a framework for the analysis of Mansfield’s writing, integrating current critical commentary on her fiction, Mansfield’s private thoughts and her experimental fiction. Whilst there have in the past been studies of Mansfield’s writing addressing aspects of the narrative techniques of her stories that construct multifarious representations of the self, particularly those by Clare Hanson (1981), Kate Fullbrook (1986) and Sydney Janet Kaplan (1991), to date no full-length study exists which coordinates notebook entries, letters and Mansfield’s fiction across her writing career. Using a chronological analysis this thesis demonstrates how her preoccupation with the self underlies the energy and liveliness of her stories and is a key influencing factor in her creation of a unique aesthetic. Using 2 narratological theory as a guide, close textual analysis of stories from across Mansfield’s entire oeuvre informs this study, revealing how she learns to exploit literary techniques such as focalisation and free indirect discourse in order to represent the ‘hundreds of selves’ experienced by her characters. The thesis will illustrate from a selection of stories, how the spirit and uniqueness of Mansfield’s experimental fiction comes from observations about the contradictions of the self, its multiplicity, its division and its obliqueness, achieved by placing her characters in situations that cause them to misapprehend the self or discover it anew. It will focus on Mansfield’s depictions of the frustrations, dreams and passions of her female characters as they seek escape from or transgress the boundaries forced upon them, whether these are self- imposed or result from patriarchal strictures and will aim to reveal how Mansfield’s experimental fiction captures the nuances of the female self. 3 Contents Acknowledgments 5 Abbreviations 6 Introduction 7 Chapter 1 Approaching Katherine Mansfield and Conceptualisations of the Self 15 Chapter 2 ‘Would you not like to try all sorts of lives?’: Mansfield’s Early Stories 1903 to 1909 43 Chapter 3 ‘A frantic desire to write something really fine’: Stories in the New Age 1909 to 1911 81 Chapter 4 ‘Before art can be human again, it must first learn to be brutal’: Rhythm and the Blue Review 1912 to 1913 121 Chapter 5 ‘It is more or less my own invention’: Mansfield’s writing between 1914 and 1918 160 Chapter 6 ‘The time has come for a “new word”: Mansfield’s Writing 1919 to 1922 200 Conclusion 238 Bibliography 243 4 Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my wonderful supervisors, Professor Janet Wilson, Dr. Gerri Kimber and Professor Richard Canning. It has been a privilege to be supervised by such an erudite team, particularly by Dr. Gerri Kimber whom I have long considered the world’s leading expert on Katherine Mansfield. My supervisors have been supportive and kind and have made the process a pleasure. I would like to thank the University of Northampton for their professionalism and support. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends who have given me strength and courage and who now know a lot more about Katherine Mansfield than they care to. 5 Abbreviations Unless otherwise indicated, all references to Katherine Mansfield’s works are to the following editions and are abbreviated thus. Mansfield’s personal writing is quoted verbatim without the use of the editorial ‘[sic]’: CW1 and CW2 The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield: Volumes 1 and 2 – The Collected Fiction, edited by Gerri Kimber and Vincent O’Sullivan, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2012. CW3 The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield: Vol 3 – The Poetry and Critical Writings, edited by Gerri Kimber and Angela Smith, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2014. CW4 The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield: Volume 4 – The Diaries of Katherine Mansfield Including Miscellaneous Works, edited by Gerri Kimber and Claire Davison, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2016. L1 to L5 The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, 5 volumes, edited by Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1984-2008. Mansfield uses ellipses frequently in her personal writing and in her fiction. These ellipses have been copied verbatim and indicated by double spacing. Where text has been abridged I indicate my own ellipses in square brackets. Where more than one work by the same author is quoted the date of the work is given in brackets. 6 Introduction Katherine Mansfield and Conceptualisations of the Self Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp was born in Wellington, New Zealand on 14th October 1888 and died at Fontainebleau, France on 9th January 1923. The Collected Works of her fiction contains 224 stories (or story fragments, dialogues) of which 94 were published in Mansfield’s lifetime. Whilst she began two novels, Juliet (1906) and Maata (1913), and wrote some extended short stories which are the length of novellas, ‘The Aloe’ (1915), ‘Prelude’ (1918) and ‘At the Bay’ (1921), Mansfield did not complete or publish any novels. In addition to her short stories she wrote and published poetry, translations and reviewed novels for the Athenaeum from April 1919 to December 1920, writing 115 reviews of fiction. During her lifetime, Mansfield saw the publication of three short story collections: In a German Pension (1911), Bliss and Other Stories (1920) and The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922). There are many studies of Mansfield’s works which address key theoretical approaches to her writing. These include feminist readings of her fiction, for example, Kate Fullbrook’s Katherine Mansfield (1986), biographical readings such as Cherry Hankin’s Katherine Mansfield and her Confessional Stories (1983) or Mary Burgan’s Illness, Gender and Writing: The Case of Katherine Mansfield (1994). There are also studies that place her within the literary canon of modernism as well as adopting a feminist gender critique, such as Sydney Janet Kaplan’s Katherine Mansfield and the Origins of Modernist Fiction (1991). Since the establishment of the Katherine Mansfield Society in 2008 and the yearbook Katherine Mansfield Studies in 2009, literary interpretation of Mansfield’s writing has gained momentum and now includes a wider variety of literary, theoretical, biographical and thematic studies of her work than used to be the case. Recent scholarly interpretation 7 includes, for example, texts examining the use of the liminal in her fiction by Claire Drewery (2011), her writing in relation to cinema by Maurizio Ascari (2014) or texts that address particular aspects of Mansfield’s writing and reception such as Gerri Kimber’s Katherine Mansfield: The View from France (2008). There are also several comprehensive essay collections that provide new and exciting interpretations of Mansfield’s fiction, such as Celebrating Katherine Mansfield: A Centenary Volume of Essays (Wilson and Kimber, 2011) and very recently Re-forming World Literature: Katherine Mansfield and the Modernist Short Story (Kimber and Wilson, 2018). The special edition of Katherine Mansfield Studies Volume Five also examines Mansfield as a post-colonial writer.1 This thesis examines Mansfield’s conceptualisation of the self in her notebooks and letters and how she translates these ideas into her fiction via aesthetic experimentation. Mansfield scholars have already addressed some aspects of Mansfield’s preoccupation with the self by examining notebook entries, letters and particular stories; however, there is no full-length study examining how Mansfield’s compulsion to write about the self in her notebooks and letters translates into her determination to develop literary techniques to represent the self in her fiction. Moreover, studies such as those I have described above often 1 Kate Fullbrook. Katherine Mansfield. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986. Cherry Hankin. Katherine Mansfield and her Confessional Stories. London: MacMillan,

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