Filosofická Fakulta Masarykovy Univerzity

Home , Bliss (short story), Prelude (short story), Sun and Moon (Mansfield), The Little Governess, The Woman at the Store

Jm én o Au Masarykova univerzita tor Filozofická fakulta a 20 Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky 07

Bakalářská diplomová práce

2011 Petra Vazačová

Hřbet

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Petra Vazačová

Narrative Presentation and Interrogation of Social Conventions in the Stories of Katherine Mansfield Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph. D. 2011

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author’s signature

Acknowledgement I would like to thank to PhDr. Janka Kaščáková and to Stephen P. Hardy, Ph. D.

Table of Contents

Introduction 6

Chapter one: The perspective of the child 11

Chapter two: The perspective of the young woman 21

Conclusion 36

Bibliography 41

Introduction

According to Michel Foucault, our society has developed the systems of restrictions, which are more or less quietly obeyed by its members: we are not allowed to be outspoken in whatever situation: there exists a taboo of a topic, a ritual of circumstances, a privileged or an exclusive right of the subject, who is speaking. These restrictions intersect and form a grid, with dark fields in its tight corners. (Foucault, 9)

Katherine Mansfield aimed her attention into these dark places; in her stories she concentrated on not very favourable and even taboo topics, such as child neglect and abuse, child sexuality, violence in marriage, victimization of women and lesbian love.

Some of her first stories published in Great Britain openly described these topics, but later in her work she became more ´socialized´ and for the criticism she used more

´disguised´, sophisticated forms. In this thesis I intend to explore which social conventions Katherine Mansfield criticised and the literary devices she developed when creating her short stories. Another aspect I would like to concentrate on is Mansfield´s

“New Zealanderness” and whether her New Zealand origin enabled her to view English society from a special perspective.

For each story Mansfield chose a certain frame which she filled with a particular atmosphere – descriptions of light, descriptions of emotions and epiphany, an intuitive approach towards the story which she used in her stories helped to create an overall impressionistic effect. Julia van Gunsteren claims that modernist narrative techniques are already traceable in Katherine Mansfield´s adolescent journal entries.

(Gunsteren, 17) She also points out the impressionistic approach towards the reality which was widely used by Katherine Mansfield in her later work:

“In Impressionism, “reality” is in rapid flux, always changing, evanescent; to

portray the Impressionistic ´reality´ therefore, the episodes must be brief,

capturing fleeting, and more or less intense moments of experience, in which

characters and the world are perceived but not arrested. In this regard,

Mansfield stories are Impressionistic. They tend towards accumulation,

aggregates of episodes, rather then towards any continuous action. A story

rarely proceeds from beginning to end with no lapses in chronology, or

breaks between scenes. There are no expository links to explain what

happens between episodes. ... Mansfield does not attempt to circumscribe

reality or give it full definition.” (Gunsteren, 24)

Observing how Katherine Mansfield achieved the impressionistic effect will be one level of the analysis. The other level will be the analysis of the narrative techniques which she used to lighten the dark fields of the post-Victorian society (to repeat

Foucault´s phrase). She dived into consciousness of her characters to bring forth their deep thoughts, both sacred and profane, both naive and appalling; by showing fragments of characters´ lives she offered pieces of the picture of the changing society of her time. Martin Wallace described different methods of representing consciousness:

“Mode of representing thought

FIRST PERSON Past recounted (first person, past tense), usually as a journal,

diary, autobiography, speaking to someone (skaz, dramatic

monologue); writing to someone (epistolary novel); or

addressing a reader.

Direct discourse.

aPresent consciousness represented: “interior monologue” (first

person, present tense), either talking to oneself or transcript of

the mind.

Direct discourse

THIRD PERSON Psycho-narration: narrator describes contents of character´s

mind (third person, past tense)

Indirect discourse

aQuoted monologue: ´interior monologue´quoted by narrator

(narrative third person, past tense, character´s thought – first

person, past tense)

Direct discourse

aRepresented speech and thought, or narrated monologue:

character´s thoughts, in her own language, third person (both

narration and thoughts in third person, past tense)”

------

aThese three types are sometimes called ´stream of

consciousness´” (Martin, 140)

Katherine Mansfield used both direct and indirect discourse in her stories and also another type of narrative method which Sydney Janet Kaplan called free indirect discourse – a transition between direct and indirect discourse. Free indirect discourse is formed by remarks or comments uttered by the narrator of the story but spoken as if in indirect discourse of the character´s inner voice. In the stories I intend to analyze, I will try to trace different types of discourse following Martin´s criteria, the shifts from direct to indirect discourse and how the transition contributes to Mansfield´s narrative style.

In her stories, Katherine Mansfield mostly captured a family life, showing the point of view of the most vulnerable person (yet not as a rule). I have chosen stories in which the narrator is a child (How Pearl Button was Kidnapped, Sun and Moon, a chapter from Prelude) and a young woman (The Little Governess, Bliss, The Woman at the Store). The story How Pearl Button was Kidnapped (1912) and The Woman at the

Store (1911) were one of Mansfield´s first published stories in J. M. Murry´s review

Rythm and both stories describe New Zealand from a rather unpleasant perspective; these two stories also captured the native Maoris, later in her stories Mansfield concentrated on ´higher´ society and the natives and the different culture values they accomplished were not mentioned (the short story Maata might be the only exception).

The first chapter will examine how Mansfield described the child´s view of the adult´s world and child´s first reactions to a social training. Although Mansfield wrote a number of stories in which children play the main role, in these particular stories her criticism of absurd social values are most clearly visible. In How Pearl

Button was Kidnapped the usage of symbols and associative ideas will be focused on and how these factors helped to create the tension and atmosphere in the story. In Sun and Moon the vulnerability of children and the neglect and indifference towards them will be discussed. Children´s social training and their first steps in power games will be shown when analysing the chapter from a short story Prelude.

The childishness and naivety of a young woman is the theme of the story The

Little Governess, which is the first short story to be analysed in the second chapter.

Since there are only a few protagonists in this story, the use of direct, indirect and free indirect discourse is easily traceable and will be focused on. The story Bliss is one of the best Mansfield´s short stories and was much discussed from different points of view by many critics. The story is highly complex and its theme – woman´s love and what forms

it might take, was a rather unusual topic at the beginning of the 20th century. In the thesis, the female passivity, the women´s adaptation to social conventions and how the adaptations effect the women described in Bliss will be looked at. The theme of the story The Woman at the Store questioned the function and dysfunction of a marriage and woman´s duty to obey and follow her husband. Whether the woman can be live an independent life and what price she pays for her freedom will be analysed.

Prior to the analysis, some biographical data from Katherine Mansfield´s life should be mentioned. Born in New Zealand as Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp in 1888, she refused to live a provincial life in New Zealand. She set out for London to make a living as a writer and tried to live the life of a true artist. Yet she soon and painfully realized that the chances for a woman to live independently in London in 1910s are not much higher then in New Zealand. Struggling for living and for long periods merely surviving probably weakened her immunity system and she became terminally ill. It is possible that because of her diseases she became disillusioned with the lure and glory of an artist life and started to view her childhood as the best part of her life. Her New

Zealand childhood memories, her experience with the city life, being both an outsider from a provincial town and an outcast (feeling so because of her contagious diseases), her experience of a woman in the world of men are all captured in her stories. Narrators of her stories are somehow excluded from the bright life of the well-off middle class society, they are passively driven into situations and events they are not able to control, and they are often weak in their characters.

Although her personal fate might seem rather dark, she was an inspiration for at least two modernist authors – D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. According to

Mansfield´s biographer Claire Tomalin (Tomalin, 126), her personality and perhaps even some episodes from her adolescence inspired D. H. Lawrence when he was

writing his Women in Love. Virginia Woolf described Mansfield in her diaries after

Mansfield´s death with a striking vividness:

“She had her look of a Japanese doll, with the fringe combed quite straight

across her forehead. Sometimes we looked very steadfastly at each other, as

though we have reached some durable relationship, independent of the changes

of the body, through the eyes. Hers were beautiful eyes – rather doglike,

brown, very wide apart, with a steady slow rather faithful & sad expression.

[...] She looked very ill, very drawn, & moved languidly, drawing herself

across the room, like some suffering animal. [...] And I was jealous of her

writing – the only writing I have ever been jealous of. This made it harder to

write to her; & I saw in it , perhaps from jealousy, all the qualities I dislike in

her.” (Woolf, 61)

Yet Katherine Mansfield did not belong among modernist writers for her friendship with them but for her literary work. When she died in January 1923, just 34 years old, she left behind about 100 short stories, some of them already published.

Chapter one

The perspective of a child. How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped, Sun and Moon,

Prelude

As has been mentioned above, most of Katherine Mansfield´s characters were somehow excluded from the society or they felt uncertain of their position in it.

Children depicted in her stories try to fit in a grown up world but they cannot suppress the feeling of discrepancy between the ´correct behavior´ and social rules they were taught, and the natural law of things as they feel it. W. H. New draws an interesting

parallel between a perception of a child/child-like/childish and a perception of New

Zealand from a European point of view:

“... But this image of social innovation, [...] , was implicitly countered by a

second and more romantic image: of New Zealand as a child-like land

(daughter nation of the Empire), for whom utopia (by association) was a lovely

but child-ish dream. If childlike, it could be admired for innocence of its

desires. But if childish, it did not have to be seriously regarded. By this

paradigm, a place called “New Zealand” could be conceptualized as ideal; but

a place called “Europe” nevertheless continued to represent sophistication, and

sophistication remained the functional measure of adult success.” (New, 50)

The contrast between two different worlds – the child´s world (tied to the world of nature and in some extent to its inhabitants, Maori people) on one side and the adult

(colonists) world on the other Mansfield depicted in the story How Pearl Button was

Kidnapped. Despite the fact that Mansfield wrote the story in 1912, at the beginning of her writing career, it already contains many of the features characteristic for

Mansfield´s literary canon: the rich use of symbols which brings forth different associations of images, the use of direct and indirect discourse, the fragmentation of the story, a description of passivity of characters , their painful awakening into reality because of wrong ´setting´ of their values.

At the very title of the story can be observed Mansfield´s specific manoeuvres with her reader – she let the reader doubt : how can a pearl button be kidnapped? Also the wording “How ... “ suggests that the narrative is conveying something unnatural, something out of place, fairy-tale-like, something not to be believed in because children-like or even childish. It takes first three sentences of the story till the ´right order of the things ´ is established:

“Pearl Button swung on the little gate in front of the House of Boxes. It was the

early afternoon on a sunshiny day with little winds playing hide-and-seek in it.

They blew Pearl Button´s pinafore frill into her mouth, and they blew the street

dust all over the House of Boxes.” (Undiscovered Country, 23).

The ´pinafore frill´ are the words which place Pearl Button among the girls, who can be kidnapped, not among the little things, which can be easily lost. The nature and the child behave in a similar round cyclic or semi-cyclic way as if they belong to the same category. The House of Boxes with its squareness and ´right´ angles does not fit into round cycles of nature; the pinafore (a sign of a social status) restrains Pearl Button from breathing and suffocates her in a similar way as the dusty winds suffocate the people in the House of Boxes. The House of Boxes might be a square one, a cube like building, but it can also be the House of Punches (to box sb. ears) where the girl can be repeatedly beaten or mentally punished, a round after a round, as if naturally. Although the description of ´the early afternoon of a sunshiny day´ seems idyllic, it might be describing a neglected, even abused child who was not wanted inside the house despite the afternoon heat and unpleasant dusty wind and was probably thrown out because of its misbehavior. Katherine Mansfield used idiomatic expressions and words which collocate to create an uneasy, tensed atmosphere and even though clearly stating

´nothing happens on early afternoon on a sunshiny day´, the suspect is aroused by the symbols and associations of ideas they represent. The girl Pearl was taken away by two

Maori women – she “slipped out into the road” as if by accident, like a little button, thinking with curiosity “what they had in their House of Boxes.”:

“One of the women gave over her flax basket of ferns and caught Pearl Button

up in her arms, and walked with Pearl Buttons´ head against her shoulder and

her dusty little legs danging. She was softer than a bed and she had a nice smell

– a smell that made you bury your head and breathe and breathe it. . . .”

(Undiscovered Country, 24).

Here Mansfield offers another set of contrasting symbols to create the atmosphere of uncertainty: the flex basket and ferns are used by Maori people for preparing food (meat or vegetables are wrapped in fern leaves and put into the pre-heated hole in the ground).

Pearl was caught like a prey and carried like a dead animal, like a meal-to-be. The shift from direct discourse (first sentence), which describes dangerous world of adults, to the indirect discourse, which describes Pearl´s innocent naivety, calms the feeling of fear and rising suspicion. Pearl craved for mother´s love, which was probably never given to her, and her animal-like craving made her cling to the strange woman as if it was her mother and helped her to accustom to the situation. Three full-stops after the words

“breathe and breathe it. . . .” are Mansfield´s. Although this story is not as fragmented as the longer pieces (f. i. “The Daughters of the Late Colonel”), the full-stops serve here as a break between two different scenes. Mansfield intentionally created a feeling of insecurity and suspense in her character to have it replaced by feeling of love and happiness. Toward the climax of the story, the changes of opposite situations follow closely:

“Pearl forgot her fright and began digging too. She got hot and wet and

suddenly over her feet broke a little line of foam. [...]. ´Lovely, lovely!´ [...]

She was so excited that she rushed over to her woman and flung her little thin

arms round the woman‟ s neck, hugging her, kissing. . . .” (sic)(Undiscovered

Country, 26)

The cycle of dangerous and joyful events seems to stop evolving at the point of

Pearl´s complete happiness, the point in which a good fairy-tale should end. Three full- stops might mean that Pearl fell asleep again, deeply buried in intimacy and motherly

love, if being understood the same way as in the passage quoted above. The full-stops can also suggest the shift in place and time – and the situation changes once more:

“The woman raised herself and Pearl slipped down on the sand and looked

towards the land. Little men in blue coats – little blue men came running,

running towards her with shouts and whistling – a crowd of little blue men to

carry her back to the House of Boxes.” (Undiscovered Country, 26).

The story closes with the similar wording – Pearl again slips from one world to another as a small button with a loose tie to its garment – in the girl´s case the garment of motherly love. The intensity of the “running, running” shows the determination of the

“little blue men” more then their “shouts and whistling”. Pearl is carried again, she has to passively accept the situation and no indirect discourse for her inner feelings is offered now. She will not be heard of anymore, maybe only in a fairy-tale which can be narrated to naughty children instead of a bedtime story.

Katherine Mansfield used a form of the fairy-tale to communicate the ideas which – written more straightforwardly – would not be accepted in British society in

1912, when the story was written. Firstly, the idea of a child from a rich middle class family being unwanted or neglected. Mansfield disputed the deep-rooted Victorian praise of maternity – what is the point of having children if the “ironing-because-it´s-

Tuesday” (Undiscovered Country, 23) means more to the mother? Secondly, the absence or passivity of men in the story – white men are either in the offices or in service, Maori men do not participate in women actions because they are not needed – suggest the fact that women can easily live content lives in society without men. Two

– probably lesbian – women kidnapped the child to live as a complete family – that might be acceptable only in the fairy-tale or among savage Maoris. Lastly, Mansfield viewed the Maoris as human beings equal to the whites. In this particular story, all the

positive features are presented in the Maori women – beauty of the soul, determination and courage.

The child in the story witnessed the event which was beyond the scope of its understanding and was passively pushed and carried around the place, unable to control her situation. In the story Sun and Moon, similar submissive observation of the world of adults and child´s painful awakening into their world can be seen. The misleading title brings forth the notion of heavenly bodies, yet Sun and Moon are nicknames for two siblings, a boy and a girl. Similarly as Pearl, whose name may suggest that she was dear to their parents but in fact was neglected and not wanted, giving nicknames Sun and Moon to the children can suggest a deep affection, yet the same indifference towards their inner selves can be observed. Sun and Moon opens with similar underlying symbols like the story How Pearl Button was Kidnapped: “In the afternoon the chairs came, a whole big cart full of little gold ones with their legs in the air. And then the flowers came. [...] There was nobody to look after Sun and Moon.” (Bliss and other stories, 208) A slight hint on the legs in the air could imply that upcoming event is not suitable for children and a few lines after it is made clear that children are excluded from the rush in the house. The story is narrated from boy´s perspective, with child naivety and curiosity over the little things. Both children observe the preparations for the evening party and with astonishment adore the beautiful decorations:

“´Ah, but you haven´t seen the ice pudding,´said the Cook. ´Come along.´ Why

was she being so nice, thought Sun as she gave them each a hand. And they

look into refrigerator.

Oh ! Oh ! Oh! It was a little house. It was a little pink house with white snow

on the roof and green windows and a brown door and stuck in the door there

was a nut for a handle.

When Sun saw the nut he felt quite tired and had to lean against Cook.” (Bliss

and Other Stories, 210).

The Cook – a complete stranger in the house – was the only one to show the children the lavish decorations. The dining room was also enriched: “Red ribbons and bunches of roses tied up the table at the corners. In the middle was a lake with rose petals floating on it. [...] And all the winking glasses and shining plates and sparkling knives and forks – and all the food. And the little red table napkin made into roses. . . .”

(Bliss and Other Stories, 211) The use of indirect discourse takes the reader into Sun´s tender inner world of sensitivity, shows his natural sense for art and harmony whereas direct discourse describes the world of adults, their indifferent pragmatism and lack of affection towards the children. The children are totally excluded from the party – only for a few whiles they can watch and are soon sent away. Their mother instructed the

Nurse: “´I´ll ring for them when I want them, Nurse, and then they can just come down and be seen and go back again,´ said she.” (Bliss and other stories, 211) The children are treated in the same way as decorations – they serve only for showing off. But they obediently listen to omnipotent parents, behave well, yet their curiosity does not let them sleep. When they wake up, they see the dark side of beauty – drunk Father and half-naked Mother in a destroyed room:

“But – oh! oh ! what had happened. The ribbons and the roses were all pulled

untied. The little red table napkins lay on the floor, all the shining plates were

dirty and all the winking glasses. The lovely food that the man had trimmed

was all thrown about, and there were bones and bits and fruit peels and shells

everywhere. There was even a bottle lying down with stuff coming out of it on

to the cloth and nobody stood it up again.

And the little pink house with the snow roof and the green windows was

broken – broken – half melted away in the centre of the table. [...]

[Sun] [S]uddenly put up his head and gave a loud wail.

´I think it´s horrid – horrid ! ´he sobbed. [...]

And wailing loudly, Sun stumped off to the nursery.” (Bliss and Other Stories,

217).

The vulgar hint about the chairs at the very beginning of the story suggested the forthcoming truth about the party – despite all the pretended beauty and decorative art, all the child witnessed at the end was vulgarism and destruction. Sun wailed like an animal because what he saw was animal-like and broke his spirit. Mansfield questioned the idea of parentage in this story – similarly as in How Pearl button was Kidnapped – why to have children if they are locked in the nursery or shout at: “Out of my way, children!” (Bliss and Other Stories, 208) Sun´s inner monologue, in indirect discourse showed his longing for love or any kind of affection from his parents and good will to please, to participate in given situation. Yet he was forbidden to show any activity and he submissively obeyed (which was, paradoxically, the only action he could do). Being taught to behave appropriately all the time, Sun is incapable of playing on his own, he just observes the world of adults and imitates them.

Mansfield included the short humorous chapter describing the children´s imitation of the adulthood in Prelude. The children in Prelude are offered more freedom for their games than Sun and Moon. The girls imitate the high society ladies:

“´Good morning, Mrs. Jones.´

´Oh, good morning, Mrs. Smith. I´m so glad to see you. Have you brought your

children?´

´Yes, I have brought both my twins. I have had another baby since I saw you

last, but she came so suddenly I haven´t had time to make her any clothes, yet.

So I left her. . . . How is your husband?´” (Bliss and Other Stories, 42).

Mansfield inserted the matter-of-the-fact language and phrases overheard in real conversation into girls´ mouths with a chilling effect – as if the baby was left to die without any affection in her mother whereas well-being of the husband – the centre of female´s universe – was ´im-mensely´ important. The boys in Prelude play boys´ games

– they tame a mongrel dog and feed him with a secret powder to make him “a grand fighting dog” (Bliss and other stories, 45) but the dog despite all their alchemy “ [...] spent all his spare time biting and snuffling, and he stank abominably.” (Bliss and Other

Stories, 45) The boys and the girls in the story play together and even though their games are sometimes dangerous – “Lottie didn´t want to play that [hospital] because last time Pip had squeezed something down her throat and it hurt awfully.” (Bliss and

Other Stories, 47) – the whole chapter describing the children´s universe is humorous and tenseless, unlike the passages describing the world of adults. Yet Mansfield, let the children undergo an ´initiating ritual´ as if the termination of sweet childhood was inevitable: Pat the handy-man offered the children to show “how the kings of Ireland chop the head off a duck.” (Bliss and Other stories, 48). What a promising game! The quiet autumn countryside and the children observed a decapitation:

“[...] and duck´s head flew of the stump. Up the blood spurted over the white

feathers and over his [Pat‟s] hand.

When the children saw the blood they were frightened no longer. They

crowded round and began to scream: ´The blood! The blood!´ Pip forgot all

about his duck. He simply threw it away from him and shouted, ´I saw it. I saw

it´ and jump round the wood block.

Rags, with cheeks as white as paper, ran up to the little head, put out a finger as

if he wanted to touch it, shrank back again and then again put out a finger. He

was shivering all over.

Even Lottie, frightened little Lottie, began to laugh and pointed at the duck and

shrieked: ´Look, Kezia, look.´” (Bliss and other Stories, 51).

As appalling as the killing might seem, the shock and the excitement gave the children the feeling of unity – they lost themselves in the same emotions and relieved the tension in a natural way. But after the ritual their little child community fell apart, they left each other alienated and locked in their own personal universe as if no games could have been played anymore. To emphasize the end of the children's world,

Mansfield did not devote a line to the children till the end of Prelude. Even she, the omnipotent author, neglected them. As W. H. New claimed, the characters in Prelude act and play “exercises of differing forms of power; they are the agencies, in other words, occasionally of resistance, but always of social training.” (New, 148). In the extracts quoted above, the girls, pretending to be the ladies, show the power over their children and among themselves – “[...] but Queen Victoria – she´s my godmother, you know – sent him [...]” (Bliss and Other Stories, 42); Lottie´s throat was hurt by Pip when playing ´hospitals´- he was exercising his power over her, in the same way as he tortured his dog. Pat, the handy man, acted as the king of Ireland to show his power over life and death. And Katherine Mansfield participated in power games – despite all her hide-and-seek effort not to be seen as an author – in Prelude by choosing which characters she would develop and concentrate further on.

In the chapter called The perspective of the child, short passages from three

Mansfield stories illustrate how she questioned the way the children are treated and mistreated by the more powerful adults. She concentrated on till her time undebated and

even taboo tasks such as child´s neglect and abuse, children´s attempts at exercising both social and physical powers over each other. She showed family – using the words of Pamela Dunbar – as

“ a site of conflict and tension, threatened by both the individual´s

unwillingness or inability to conform to the role assigned them within it, and

by the dark complexity of the individual consciousness and of family

member´s relationships with each other. She [Katherine Mansfield] shows

particular concern for connections in which there is striking inequality of

power – typically those between child and adult, or between lovers. In almost

every case her focus is upon the more vulnerable of the pair.” (Dunbar, xii)

Chapter two.

The perspective of the young woman. The Little Governess. Bliss. The woman at the

Store.

Katherine Mansfield created several stories in which the young women experienced the same vulnerability in the phallocentric world of power as the children in the world of adults. In the story The Little Governess Mansfield captured a fragment from a young woman´s travel abroad. The governess in the story was not even given a name, she was just The Little Governess on a business trip to Germany. Mansfield let the Little Governess meet the men only to emphasize the male dominance in the world of business and money – the world which Pamela Dunbar described as “[a] world in which woman gained status largely from having a male partner and a family, women who lived their lives without [men] were considered of no significance; worthy merely

of ridicule or of exploitation.” (Dunbar, 61). The Little Governess tried to adjust her old-world Victorian values to the new situations of constant changes, she mistrusted people – men – around her as if she was unable to use her common sense or female instinct in the world of men. Her desperate effort to fit, to adjust herself and to be adjusted, seemed almost comical, if it was not in fact tragic. The Little Governess´ passivity resembles the passivity of Pearl Button in How Pearl Button was Kidnapped who was also taken, carried, driven and captured. The Little Governess could have been the fly from Mansfield´s famous story The Fly, in which a businessman drowned the fly in the ink only to observe how the fly was fighting for life: The Little Governess set out for her career to find herself drown in the phallocentric world at the very beginning.

Sydney Janet Kaplan remarked that the Little Governess “ is not merely an emblem of woman as victim, but a representation of ideology´s construction of woman as a target for victimization.” (Kaplan, 120)

The story opens by the Little Governess´s monologue in indirect discourse,

Mansfield´s ´new method´ of writing - she opened the story in medias res, without any explanatory remarks. During the journey the Little Governess did not think about her family as if she did not belong to any – she was only thinking about the institution which provided her with work and sent her abroad. While she was sitting in the dark carriage of the train in France, she was thinking about England as a mother country full of women – the woman at the Governess Bureau instructed her how to travel, the stewardess on the boat took care of her, the women only shared the compartment in the

Ladies´ Cabin. The ship, the sea, the rocking of the ship resembling the rocking of the baby - everything bore mother-like features. On the Continent, there were only men to encounter as if the world of females ceased to exist. The first man she met was the porter who helped her to find the train and seated her in the carriage. He asked for his

fare – a franc and the Little Governess refused to give so much. Katherine Mansfield let the story spin around this small coin, as if the small piece of metal was the cause of the tragedy of the Little Governess, as if her small stubborn attemp over the franc caused the destruction of the girl, as if money which she travelled to earn (and all the freedom and independence they accompany) were forbidden to women. Yet, on the other hand, the Little Governess´ behavior truly seemed ridiculous – she refused to pay for the service she used, later she became frightened by the sight of four young men traveling in the compartment next to her. Since the story is narrated mainly in indirect discourse, all information about the Little Governess´ background are given only through her memories and reminiscences – at the sight of young men no memory hint about a brother or a cousin or even a friend was offered as if Little governess came straight from the monastery or an orphanage. For her, every man was a robber or a villain, ready to use his power over her. Probably that was the reason why she misjudged the old man travelling in her compartment – he lacked apparent features of the villain:

“How spick and span he looked for an old man. [...] Somehow, altogether, he

was really nice to look at. Most old men were so horrid. She couldn´t bear

them doddery – or they had a disgusting cold or something.” (Bliss and Other

Stories, 246)

What was the old man thinking of the little governess? Mansfield used the transition from direct discourse (the narrator observing the governess) into free indirect discourse to suggest the old man´s thinking:

“So she stood up, unpinned the brown straw and put it neatly in the rack beside

the dress-basket, stripped off her brown kid gloves, paired them in a tight roll

and put them in the crown of the hat for safety, and then sat down again, more

comfortably this time, her feet crossed, the papers on her lap. How kindly the

old man in the corner watched her bare little hand turning over the big white

pages, watched her lips moving as she pronounced the long words to herself,

rested upon her hair that fairly blazed under the light. Alas ! how tragic for a

little governess to possess hair that made one think of tangerines and

marigolds, of apricots and tortoiseshell cats and champagne ! Perhaps that was

what the old man was thinking as he gazed and gazed, and that not even the

dark ugly clothes could disguise her soft beauty. Perhaps the flush that licked

his cheeks and lips was a flush of rage that anyone so young and tender should

have to travel alone and unprotected through the night. “ (Bliss and Other

stories, 247)

In the first sentence, direct discourse described governess´s actions; the second sentence is narrated in free indirect discourse, bearing the signature of governess´s character as if she was observing herself through the old man´s eyes. Is it the old man, who is thinking about her beauty or is it governess´s projection of her own feelings into his person ? Or is it a narrator, circling around both characters, taking a bit from governess´s stream of consciousness and a bit from old man´s consciousness, adding the remarks “Alas ! “ and “ how tragic!” ? Mansfield used the free indirect discourse as a vehicle of bivocality; the description of governess´s appearance is not what the old man was in fact thinking as the story reveals later. His true inner feelings are disguised under the symbolic hints: he “gazed and gazed” as if by x-raying “her soft beauty” and the flush which “licked his cheeks” was definitely not of a protecting rage. The unstable never resting train, the unfamiliar darkness, the presence of a creature so alien which the man was for the Little Governess, all this contributed to the feeling of anxiety and nearly Gothic atmosphere of the story. Although the Little Governess tried to adjust her old Victorian values to comprehend a new life situation, her attempt to achieve stability

and control over the situation failed, as if a step by step of misjudgements and wrong assumptions was carrying her away from the true perception of herself and her position in the situation, as if the train was taking her away from her truly self. The old man bought her strawberries:

“They were so big and juicy she had to take two bites to them – the juice ran all

down her fingers – and it was while she munched the berries that she first

thought of the old man as a grandfather.” (Bliss and Other Stories, 252).

In her naivety, the Little Governess misinterpreted the biblical gesture of the old man – offering fruit as a symbol of intercourse – and included the old man in her imaginary family, for her a symbol of stability and female dominion. Mansfield created the situation with the same fruit-offering motif in the story How Pearl Button was

Kidnapped in which Pearl was openly laughed at her naivety and ignorance of the meaning of the gesture. In the Governess´s case, there was no audience, which would show the right angle of view on the situation, apart from the old man who acted as if he was the devil himself. The God-like omniscience narrator with its slightly ironic comments withdrew from the story, it was only silence which was heard from her side, the old man took full control over the situation. He asked the Little Governess to spend the day in Munich with him, showing his card to prove his credibility: “ ´Herr

Regierungsrat. . . ´ He had a title ! Well, it was bound to be all right ! So after that the little governess gave herself up to the excitement of being really abroad, [...].” (Bliss and Other Stories, 253) The romantic believes in noble aristocratic values betrayed her instinctive alertness and pushed her further into her personal disaster – she spent the day with the old man, forgot all about the time because she was so “frightfully happy”, her

“grateful baby heart glowed with love for the fairy-grandfather” (Bliss and other stories,

257) and went to his flat. No wonder that when the old man tried to kiss and seduce her,

she was in the state of horror: “She rocked herself and cried out loud and said ´Ah, ah !

´ pressing her hands to her mouth.” (Bliss and Other Stories, 260) The Little Governess came late to the hotel where she was to meet her employer and lost the prospect of the future.

Katherine Mansfield captured a fragment from a young woman´s life to describe her naivety, vulnerability and immaturity while dealing with uncommon situations. On the one hand, Mansfield created man-dominated situations to emphasize woman´s inability to achieve any control of her own life in man-dominated world. On the other, she ridiculed the women (the Little Governess in this case) because they allow themselves to be driven and controlled by men. In this particular story, she used free indirect discourse for the first time in her writing and this narrative method helped her to suspense the tension of the story and to offer different focuses on the particular situations. The remarks in free indirect discourse deepened the atmosphere of alienation and displacement, which Mansfield had already evoked by the impersonal train and its constant movement trough the darkness, and also by the atmosphere of the dark cold rooms in the hotel and the old man´s flat. The shifts from indirect and free indirect discourse, from ´telling´ into ´showing´ into direct discourse accentuated the Little

Governess´s tragic failure. By commenting the story with a slight irony in free indirect discourse and then silencing the narrative voice, Mansfield took the reader deeper in the story, as if expecting the participation from reader´s side - him/her to finish the story and question the morals of the story for him/herself.

Katherine Mansfield was often criticized for writing monotonous stories, with repetitive characters and situations (Gunsteren, 131) Similar flaws in character, which can be traceable in the Little Governess, can be observed in the character of Bertha

Young, the main protagonist of the story Bliss. Bliss is undoubtedly one of the best

Mansfield´s short stories and was criticized and analyzed more often than other story mentioned in this thesis. Virginia Woolf rejected Bliss for its shallowness and lack of conception, other critics found suprisingly divergent themes for analysis: Chantal

Cornut-Gentile D´Arcy examined the story from Marxist-feminist perspective, Thomas

Dilworth drew attention to underlying Darwinism and survival of the “fittest women” in

London upper-middle class society, whereas Judith S. Neaman found Biblical and

Shakespearean motifs in the story. Bertha Young was said to be heterosexual and/or lesbian and/or frigid. The names of protagonist were discussed to the very extent –

Bertha Young is still young and immature despite being 30 years old and giving birth to a baby, Pearl Fulton resembles the full moon both in appearance, clothing and name, the

Norman Knights (a married couple, a wife “did look like a very intelligent monkey”

(Bliss and Other Stories, 124)) and their visit are to resemble Norman conquest of

Britain. The story is so rich in symbols and associations of ideas that it is probably the reason why it evoked impressions in so many different readers.

Similarly like the Little Governess, who was carried away by the train to her personal disaster, Bertha Young was carried away by the feeling of bliss. The plot of the story – if it might be called a plot at all – is very simple: Bertha Young came home, played with the baby, later entertained the guests at the dinner and when saying good- bye to them, she discovered that her husband and the guest whom Bertha also loved are lovers. Yet each scene of the story, each symbol and every dialogue are full of tension and richness as if they were ready to fall out from the book as the ripe fruit. Bertha is full of bliss and cannot suppress that feeling; her dining room is full of rich colours and smells of exotic fruit; her guests are full of emotions and dramatic gestures; her husband is full of passion for fighting and high pressure; Pearl Button is full of

mystery. The ´fullness´ of everything is too intensive to be withstood – Bertha described it by observing her image in the mirror:

“She hardly dared to breathe for fear of fanning it higher, and yet she breathed

deeply, deeply. She hardly dared to look into the cold mirror – but she did look,

and it gave her back a woman, radiant, with smiling, trembling lips, with big,

dark eyes and an air of listening, waiting for something . . . divine to happen . .

. that she knew must happen . . . infallibly.” (Bliss and Other Stories, 117).

Bertha tried to stop a peculiar angelical fall which she expected by observing something very earthly – a pear tree. She identified herself with the tree as if stillness of the tree could calm her uprooted emotions; she even dressed in the clothes of the same colours as the tree for the dinner. In her bliss, she took herself for the pear tree and her friend, to whom she felt lesbian desire, as the moon:

“What Miss Fulton did, Bertha didn´t know. They had met at the club and

Bertha had fallen in love with her, as she always did fall in love with beautiful

women who had something strange about them. [...]

Came another tiny moment, while they waited, laughing and talking, just a

trifle too much at their ease, a trifle too unaware. And then Miss Fulton, all in

silver, with a silver fillet binding her pale blond hair, came in smiling, her head

a little on one side.” (Bliss and Other Stories, 121, 127).

As if the tree and the moon met, as if the goddess of the tree met the goddess of the moon, Bertha though that both women shared the exquisite feeling of divine bliss. They both observed the pear tree in the garden:

“How long did they stand there? Both, as it were, caught in that circle of

unearthly light, understanding each other perfectly, creatures of another world,

and wondering what they were to do in this one with all this blissful treasure

that burned in their bosoms and dropped, in silver flowers, from their hair and

hands?” (Bliss and Other Stories, 131).

The tree and the moon share the energy of the sun – the tree would die without the sun and the moon would not shine and would be just a dark piece of rock. Yet there are many trees but only one moon. For Bertha, her husband was the Sun of her life – she circled around him and around the family they formed. Yet when thinking about her marriage, which in spite of being totally happy in fact did not work, Bertha admitted her cold emotions towards her husband and understanding that he needed a different kind of love. Was she aware of the fact that one day he would find the moon to shine on?

“And she saw . . . Harry with Miss Fulton´s coat in his arms and Miss Fulton

with her back turned to him and her head bent. He tossed the coat away, put his

hands on her shoulders and turned her violently to him. His lips said: ´I adore

you,´ and Miss Fulton laid her moonbeam fingers on his cheeks and smiled her

happy smile. [...]

Bertha simply ran over to the long windows.

´Oh, what is going to happen now?´ she cried.

But the pear tree was as lovely as ever and as full of flower and as still.” (Bliss

and Other Stories, 135-6).

Was the nervous feeling of trembling bliss a first realization of a true lesbian love?

Was it a first awakening into a mature female love towards her husband? Or was it a hysterical knowing that Bertha´s husband´s love finally found its goal in somebody else´s arms and nervous bliss was a mere waiting for the full realization of adultery?

Regardless the origin of the feeling, it left the heroine totally alienated from everything and everybody: from her female object of adoration, from her husband – despite

Bertha´s ´cold feelings´ the essential part of her life, even from her child which “has to

be kept – not in a case like a rare, rare fiddle – but in another woman´s arms.” (Bliss and

Other Stories, 119) Bertha got stranded as lonely as the pear tree which she wanted to resemble, yet the tree in itself bore a meaning whereas Bertha´s life at that moment seemed hopeless and meaningless. She was looking at the tree trough the frame of the

French window as if she was observing her own life in which she was framed and locked by social conventions of her class. Although her awakening into reality caused her much harm, it also gave her chance to mature, to change and master her own affairs.

She got the chance to be an earthly human in the way the pear tree was real; her realization empowered her to ged rid of ´monkeying´ and pretentiousness of her pseudo-artist friends, she did not have to imitate her husband who “would pretend to himself that they [things] mattered beyond measure. [...] For there were moments when he rushed into battle were no battle was. (Bliss and Other stories, 127). Even though

Bertha seemed hopeless when she cried “Oh, what is going to happen now ? “ (Bliss and Other Stories, 136), her power was in her hands and although the story ended there,

Mansfield offered her heroine the chance to live more fully.

The Little Governess got drowned in male world of power of the fittest, Bertha nearly lost herself in a female dominion – at home. Most of Katherine Mansfield´s female characters lost in power games when attempting to play an equal role in patriarchal society. The story about the woman who stood against the patriarchal values

The Woman at the Store was one of the first Mansfield´s stories published in England, in J. M. Murry´s review Rythm. This story was written shortly before the story How

Pearl Button was Kidnapped and according to Mansfield´s biographers, the inspiration for both stories was her camping trip to the northern New Zealand, the place now called

Te Urewera National Park. The story is not considered as one of her masterpieces for several reasons: it lacks the brightness and smoothness in the descriptions of the events

presented later in her stories, there is no free indirect discourse – it was written in an

´old-fashioned way´, with a few modernist features. Even the editor of the book

Undiscovered Country, Ian A. Gordon, reveled ambiguity about the story in the

Introduction : “´The Woman in the Store´ is a violent tale of the colonial backblocks conjured up by a memory of the camping journey of 1907.” (Undiscovered country, xiv) and few pages further he even claimed that Mansfield “loses touch: she can only reproduced what she overheard or read in the more sensational pages of the local newspaper. What could a girl of her background know of [...] the Woman at the Store, she with her fastidious distaste for the smell of cooking mutton chops, ´commercial travellers and second-class, N. Z.´?” (sic, Undiscovered Country, xviii). Undoubtedly, the quality of Mansfield´s stories fluctuated, many stories which she herself considered not worth publishing were published posthumously. Although the theme of The Woman at the Store differs from How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped, some details captured in

The Woman at the Store are also used in How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped. From the structural point of view, the story is underdeveloped and not inventory (linear structure

– not fragmentary, no free indirect discourse), yet as far as the theme is concerned,

Mansfield openly criticized middle-class values and also New Zealand idyllic life in nature.

The opening paragraph of the story is full of symbols from Mansfield´s characteristic repertoire which she used for describing New Zealand nature – the heat, the blowing wind throwing the dust into travellers´ faces, the flowers:

“Hundreds of larks shrilled; the sky was slate colour, and the sound of the larks

reminded me of slate pencils scraping over the surface. There was nothing to

be seen but wave after wave of tussock grass, patched with purple orchids and

manuka bushes covered with thick spider webs.” (Undiscovered Country, 337).

In this filmic way (Sandley, 76) she takes the reader into her narrative. The unbearable timelessness of this moment, the slate sky as if before the thunder and the annoying birds show the narrator´s tension and his/her expectation of some kind of relief. The story takes place in the middle of nowhere and everything can happen in the middle of nowhere – the connection with a fairy-tale is obvious. Three travellers are about to arrive to the store where they want to spend night. Two men are described in detail but the identity of the third one – the narrator – is not revealed through the whole story. Is it a girl? Is it a boy? A young woman or a young man? Even after a detailed reading the sex of the narrator is not certain for a half of the story and the age is also concealed. His/her inner voice just suggest this identity:

“I half fell asleep and had a sort of uneasy dream that the horses were not

moving forward at all – then I was on a rocking-horse, and my old mother was

scolding me for raising such a fearful dust from the drawing-room carpet. [...] I

snivelled and woke to find Jim leaning over me, maliciously smiling.

´That was a case of all but,´ said he. ´I just caught you. What´s up? Been bye-

bye?´” (Undiscovered country, 338).

The rocking horse and Jim´s words “been bye-bye” – the direct discourse – show that third travel companion can be a girl or a young woman (Jim´s “malicious smile”).

As was mentioned above, the structure of the whole story is not fragmented, but it captures the fragment from someone´s life – apart from clothing nothing more is known about the travellers. The whole story resembles an entry from a travel book, with hardly any personal history of the travellers. When the travellers come to the store, Mansfield aimed the sunlight at the woman as if in a film to drive all attention to her:

“The sun pushed through the pale clouds and shed a vivid light over the scene.

It gleamed on the woman´s yellow hair, over her flapping pinafore and the rifle

she was carrying.” (Undiscovered Country, 338).

Mansfield used the description of light and brightness in many other stories (The

Daughters of the Late Colonel, Bliss). The movement of the travellers was transferred to the woman by the sunlight, now she is bearing the weight of the story. The rifle in her hands is carried more like a baby, not like a gun and the men are aware of the fact that she would not use it. Her complaints about their staying do not take long.

“´I would rather you didn´t stop. . . . You can´t, and there´s the end of it. [...] I

ain‟ t got nothing!

„Well, I‟m blest!‟ said Jo heavily. He pulled me aside. „Gone a bit off „er dot,‟

he whispered. „Too much alone, you know,‟ very significantly. „Turn the

sympathetic tap on „er, she‟ll come round all right.‟

But there was no need – she had come round by herself.”

(Undiscovered Country, 339).

The woman passively adapts to the men-controlled situation. Although the gun in her hand might imply some power and can be the symbol of fallus, she gave up to the world of men long before. According to Pamela Dunbar, the woman at the store had to

´masculinize´ in tough and alienating world of colonies (Dunbar, 44). The woman who according to one of the travelling men “ ´d been barmaid down the Coast – as pretty as a wax doll. Told me once in a confidential moment that she knew one hundred and twenty-five different ways of kissing!” (Undiscovered Country, 342) was now “ [...] a figure of fun. Looking at her, you felt there was nothing but sticks and wires under the pinafore – her front teeth were knocked out, she had red, pulpy hands and she wore on

her feet a pair of dirty Blunchers” (Undiscovered Country, 339). The travelling girl is shocked and she clearly stated her opinion:

“´Good Lord, what a life!´ I thought. ´Imagine being here day in, day out, with

that rat of a child and a mangy dog. Imagine bothering about ironing. Mad, of

course she´s mad! Wonder how long she´s been here – wonder if I could get

her talk.´” (Undiscovered country, 340).

The woman got stranded in the middle of nowhere because of her love for her husband. The country around her is hostile, it frightens the traveller: “There is no twilight in our New Zealand days, but a curious half-hour when everything appears grotesque – it frightens – as though the savage spirit of the country walked abroad and sneered at what it saw.” (Undiscovered country, 340). The woman´s negative attitudes towards marriage and maternity are further developed in the complaining over her husband and her distorted life:

“´It´s six years since I was married, and four miscarriages. I says to ´im, I says,

what do you think I´m doin´ up ´ere? If you was back at the Coast I´d ´ave

you lynched for child murder. Over and over I tells ´im – you´ve broken my

spirit and spoilt my looks, and wot for – that´s wot I´m driving at. [...] Oh,

some days – and months of them – I ´ear them two words knockin´ inside me

all the time – ´Wot for!´but sometimes I´ll be cooking spuds an´ I lifts the lid

off to give ´em a prong and I ´ears, quite suddin again, ´Wot for!´”

(Undiscovered Country, 344).

As if the whole place was poisoned with madness – the mad woman talking with potatoes, her child seemed also mad after examining her pictures: “ And those drawings of hers were extraordinary and repulsively vulgar. The creations of a lunatic with a lunatic´s cleverness. There was no doubt about it, the kid´s mind was diseased.”

(Undiscovered Country). Even the visitors started to behave madly – they “behaved like two children let loose” and could not stop laughing at everything they saw at the store.

To punish them for their misbehavior and laughing at her, the child showed them the picture of the woman shooting and burying the man. The same future might probably meet the third traveller who stayed while the other two left in the morning, carrying the truth about the murder with themselves.

The woman at the store was openly criticizing the institution of marriage, the woman´s passivity with which she was expected to behave – to follow and obey her husband. Being mad, her accusations can be disregarded, her substandard language suggesting her low social status weakens the intensity of accusations – the woman on her social level has no right to criticize. The woman at the store is nameless, one from

Mansfield´s “flowerless ones” (Kaščáková, 144) – one from the lonely women for which “even the family, normally considered positive, is in fact a cruel arrangement

[...], the prison and enslavement.” (Kaščáková, 144). For the woman at the store, beautiful New Zealand nature surroundings, her house and her family meant nothing more than a prison. But in spite of being on the verge of her complete destruction , she was still capable of changing her life – she “bothered about the ironing”, for one more time she offered her body to one of the travellers and for some time confined him to the place. An underlying fairy-tale-like happy ending in that story, the hope for life

(regardless the quality of the future life) is the feature unusual for Mansfield. She placed hope in the woman/killer as if rewarding her for her refusal of social values. Her child seemed to be much happier than Pearl in How Pearl Button was Kidnapped – Else

(child´s name) knew how to play – “one little patch was divided off by pawa shells”

(Undiscovered Country, 339), was not neglected and ran to mother when feeling endangered. Despite being a murderer, her mother gave the child as much affection as

she was capable of in her situation. The girl (unlike Pearl) felt certain about mother´s love and revealed the truth about mother´s murder only when saw her mother´s misbehavior (getting drunk with strangers). This story was not included in Mansfield´s canon possibly for several reasons – the theme is repulsive, everything in the story is dark or distorted – the mad woman, the lunatic child, the travellers who just passively observed woman´s tragedy, dull (not beautiful) nature, the Maoris described as savages; the structure of the story is linear, the narrator is present and told the story from her point of view. The absence of diversion from direct to indirect discourse does not intensify the atmosphere of the story and does not lead to the climax. However, in The

Woman at the Store, Mansfield described the character outside the society which intentionally crossed the social boundaries – the woman killing her husband to free herself from the functionless marriage.

Conclusion

The stories analyzed above show the variety of thought-provoking themes which Katherine Mansfield developed in the short stories. Firstly, the neglect of the child and its abuse was shown in the stories in which the main character was the child and also in the story The Little Governess – her no background might suggest that she was a neglected orphan. Katherine Mansfield mainly aimed her attention to the children from a middle class background who were not wanted – they somehow did not fit in the money-centered patriarchal society . The description of children´s premature sexuality can be traced in three stories – How Pearl Button was Kidnapped, Prelude and the

Woman at the Store. In post-Victorian society, the women gained the status only via her husband (Dunbar, 61) and their vulnerability in the patriarchal world was the second theme to be examined. Mansfield´s stories suggested that a woman was simply bound to

lose in man´s world (The Little Governess) or she had to play the role outlined by her husband (Bliss) or she had to get ´masculinized´ and gave up her femininity in order to survive (The Woman at the Store). Although Katherine Mansfield did not participate in the feminist (suffrage) movement which took place in her time, the themes of her stories might be considered feminist since she questioned the social position of the women in post-Victorian society.

The attributes such as ´bright´ (Stříbrný, 641) or ´kind of purity´ (Journal, xv) often accompany Mansfield stories. Indeed, during the first reading the reader is overpowered by the descriptions of bright sunny days, rich smell of flowers and the characters who either feel totally happy or seek happiness which is just to be reached.

Yet then the atmosphere in most of the stories changes – not radically at first, the symbols of happiness and brigthness are replaced by the symbols of darkness, alienation or decay very subtly and gradually, so the disaster of the initial ´kind of purity´ comes all of sudden, as if unexpectedly. Katherine Mansfield used different set of symbols and associations of ideas to achieve the impressionistic effect which would capture her reader and led him/her through the story to the places she designed – to the dark fields of social restrictions and taboos.

She captivated her reader´s attention by offering different focuses on the same situation, using the shift from direct to indirect discourse and implying free indirect discourse which served as a kind of whisper into reader´s ear. The remarks and comments dropped in free indirect discourse into character´s indirect discourse as if the character in fact uttered them, intensified the tension and atmosphere in the stories.

Free indirect discourse also helped to alert the reader´s attention and made the reader think about the theme and verity of the story. Again, by using this narrative technique

Mansfield deepened the impressionistic effect of the story and led the reader doubt the social values depicted in them.

Katherine Mansfield criticized the society of her time but why was she so critical? She turned back towards her middle-class family and in her stories she often scorned its absurd values. To be an independent writer was not a pose for her but the matter of life-or-death – in her journal entries from France she claimed: “If I went back to England without a book finished I should give myself up. I should know that, whatever I said, I was not really a writer and had no claim to ´a table in my room´”

(Journal, 43). She was critical towards herself in the same way as she was to the others.

She hated ´pseudo-artists´and disliked ´intellectuals´; she never fitted in the Bloomsbury

Group and the dislike was on both sides – she was just a “little colonial of unverifiable pedigree” (Dunbar, xiv) and was never fully accepted among members of the group despite her obvious talent. Dunbar also claims that it was

“Mansfield with her innovative talents and her stylistic brilliance who was a

profound influence upon the writing of her [Virginia Woolf] friend (´I was

jealous of her writing – the only writing I was jealous of ´) it is Woolf, the

more socially and culturally established figure, who has generally been

credited with these innovations. So similarities between her writings –

Mansfield ´s almost always predating Woolf´s – are referred to by critics as if

they were the product of an affinity of minds instead of the influence of one

mind upon another.” (Dunbar, xiv).

Mansfield´s New Zealand origin might be seen as an obvious inhibitor in her writing carrier, but she also benefited from her ´savage´ experience. Different social criteria of the Maoris, which she acknowledged while being a friend with a Maori girl Martha

Grace Mahukupu, might have influenced her outlook on the white colonial society.

According to some bibliographers (Tomalin, 16), Mansfield had some sexual experience with the Maori girl; Mansfield wrote a short biographical story Three 20th

Century Girls at the age of 12, when she already described herself as having “developed the tendency to appear masculine, to the great amusement of the rest of the family”

(Katherine Mansfield´s Notebooks, 3). Probably her early sexual experiences drew her attention to the child ´s sexuality as such, doubted her own sexuality and started to view the woman´s love as the peculiar phenomenon.

Another aspect which might have sprang from the New Zealand background was the timelessness of the place. The slowness of time, described in The Woman at the

Store and mentioned in other stories, might correspond with Bergson´s idea of time as duration. In my opinion, Katherine Mansfield intuitively understood the idea of the time as an unmeasurable entity and in her stories time is felt as a flow behind the scene (in

How Pearl Button was Kidnapped the story begins in the early afternoon and the flow of time can be felt till the dusk at the end of the story; in The Little Governess the movement of the ship across the Channel, the train across France – both represent the flow of time). When J. M. Murry, Mansfield´s life partner, studied Bergson´s philosophy in Paris (Tomalin, 99), she had already experienced the idea by her very life.

However, it was her lavish upbringing which probably influenced her most, the upbringing which she rejected and exchanged for the idea of independence and the true art. The upbringing which shallowness and hypocrisy she was scorning in her stories only to long secretly for the little luxuries and comfort which she once had. Later in her life, when she intuitively sensed the forthcoming death, she became fully devoted to her writing and used once and again her New Zealand memories as a base for further work.

In her journal entry from the day when she found blood in her sputum for the first time she wrote: “That´s what matters. How unbearable it would be to die – leave ´scraps´,

´bits´ , nothing real finished.” ( Journal, 75). The urgency of the end intensified her work yet she was dragged towards the death by her diseases in the same way like her characters who were often dragged to their ends by inevitable circumstances. She devoted her life to art to the point of a total exhaustion, but her stories outlived her – she sacrificed herself and not in vain – that´s what matters.

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Penguin Books, 1981. Print.

Résumé

This thesis presents analysis of six stories written by Katherine Mansfield. She came to England from New Zealand in 1908 and tried to establish herself as a writer. In her stories she often criticized post-Victorian society and questioned its rigid values. Her characters were usually children, housewives or spinsters (yet not as a rule) who were excluded from the dominant world of power and often became targets for victimization.

The thesis tries to describe which social conventions and institutions Mansfield criticized through the eyes of her characters.

Another criterion which the thesis attempted to fulfill was the description of

Mansfield´s narrative techniques. She combined direct discourse with indirect discourse and free indirect discourse which gave her work specific plasticity. By focusing on the stream of consciousness of one of the characters and adding the remarks of the narrator in the free indirect discourse to the character´s inner monologue, she created highly impressionistic situations which took her readers deep into her stories.

Lastly, the influence of her New Zealand childhood upon her writing was considered and to what extend her colonial experience enabled her to view English society of her time from a special perspective was explored.

Resumé

Katherine Mansfieldová, původem z Nového Zélandu, opustila bohaté zázemí bankéřské rodiny a vyměnila je za život v Londýně, kde se chtěla prosadit jako spisovatelka. Ve svých povídkách často kritizovala středostavovské Viktoriánské hodnoty, vytvářila postavy, které stály mimo dění velkého světa a tak se snadno staly terčem zneužívání a ústrků. Analýza tří povídek, ve kterých jsou hlavní postavou děti, se zaměřuje na rozdíl mezi dětským nazíráním světa a “skutečným” světem dospělých.

Předmětem další analýzy pak byly tři povídky zachycující situace, ve kterých ženská hrdinka vstupuje do světa mužů. Katherine Mansfieldová poukázala na snadnou zranitelnost žen a na obtíže, které hrdinky potkávají v patriarchální společnosti.

Katherine Mansfield nechala své postavy hovořit ve vnitřním monologu, aby pak následně konfrontovala tento monolog s popisem “skutečnosti”. Touto vypravěčskou technikou (fokalizací) docílila ve svých povídkách impresionistického ladění. Jak přechod z vnitřního monologu k popisu skutečnosti ovlivnil celkový ráz povídek, bylo dalším zaměřením této bakalářské práce.

Poslední otázkou, kterou se tato bakalářská práce snažila zodpovědět, bylo, zdalipak

Katherine Mansfieldovou ovlivnilo prostředí, ve kterém vyrůstala – Nový Zéland – a nakolik ji její koloniální původ umožnil nazírat anglickou společnost z odlišné perspektivy.