This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Katherine Mansfield and Memory: Bergsonian Readings Jacqueline C. E. Jones Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Edinburgh 2016 1 Abstract This thesis is the first full-length study to investigate memory discourse in Katherine Mansfield’s short stories. It presents multiple close readings of the ways in which memory is inscribed in Mansfield’s stories, taking an approach to memory drawn from the philosophy of the French philosopher Henri Bergson. What Mansfield and Bergson share in common is an idea of the insistence of memory – its survival, determination, assertion and resistance – during a period of multiple social and historical change when memory was variously seen to be in crisis. Bergson’s distinctive theory of memory which opposes temporalism (or ‘time in the mind’) with measured (or ‘spatialised’) time provides a rich interpretive tool for analysing memory in Mansfield’s fiction. Following phases of Bergson’s developing thinking, each of the four chapters introduces a different dimension of memory – the generative, the topological, the degenerative and the cosmic – through which I analyse The Aloe and Prelude, ‘At the Bay’, ‘The Garden Party’, ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’, ‘Bliss’ and ‘The Canary’ as well as other less well-known examples of Mansfield’s fictional and personal writings. What emerges from this process is a new Mansfield acutely sensitive to the insistent power of memory and the attenuation of time past into the present, concurrent with some of her modernist contemporaries, yet especially attuned to the signal and significant thought of Bergson. Lay Summary This thesis explores the way in which memory is represented by the modernist short story writer Katherine Mansfield both in her personal writings and in a selection of her short stories against a backdrop of historical and cultural change in the early twentieth century. It approaches the idea of memory using the philosophical ideas of the late nineteenth-century French philosopher Henri Bergson and develops some of his concepts into an apparatus for close readings of both well-known stories by Mansfield, such as Prelude, ‘The Garden Party’ and ‘Bliss’, as well as less well-known and sometimes unfinished stories. I claim that memory is a strong, dynamic force both for Bergson and for Mansfield even when there were historical reasons to think that memory might be under pressure. Mansfield’s experimental literary techniques are developed, alongside her contemporaries, partly as a means of representing the fecundity as well as the occasional failures of individual memory in her characters. These techniques, which find analogies with Bergson’s 2 thought, render in fiction the power of the past and of dream; the movement of time; the complexities of forgetting; and epiphany. For the first time, in critical discussions of Katherine Mansfield’s work, the notion of subjective or interior memory is brought together with the idea of an exterior, and encompassing, cosmic memory. 3 I declare that I have composed this thesis myself, that it is my own work, and that it has not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification except as specified. Signed………………………………. 4 Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements Abbreviations and Textual Note Introduction A Generation’s Memory Bergson, Mansfield and Memory Mansfield, the Modern Short Story and Memory Mansfield’s Bergsonian Aesthetic Method Chapter One: Generative Memory – The Aloe and Prelude Introduction Mansfield’s Early Memory Texts Family Memory and Textual Generation Generating Prelude from The Aloe Generative Memory and Bergson’s Theory of Memory Bergson’s Two Forms of Recollection The Plane of Dream and Plane of Action: Memory in The Aloe and Prelude The Passive Dreamer The Man of Action The Man of Impulse The Practical Woman The Practical Dreamer 5 The Present-Centred Child The Aloe Alice and Clock Time The Time Plane – Leaving the Past Behind: Moving On Conclusion Chapter Two: Temporality, Topology and Temperament: The Geometry of Memory in ‘At the Bay’ Introduction Personal Memory Narrative Time Bergson’s Philosophy of Time Temporal Readings Temperament and the Temporal Plane The ‘Curve’ of Time Topological Readings Topological Movement and Memory The Mobile Narrator Looking Back at ‘At the Bay’ Conclusion Chapter Interlude: Before and After ‘At the Bay’ Chapter Three: Memory and Forgetting: Aphasia, Amnesia and Hyper-Reminiscence in ‘The Garden Party’ and Other Stories Introduction Necessary Forgetting and Unforgetting 6 Bergson and Freud on Aphasia and Amnesia Mansfield: The Unforgettable and Self-Forgetfulness Readings Reading 1: Amnesia and Aphasia in ‘The Garden Party’ Phase One Phase Two Phase Three Reading 2: Agraphia in ‘By Moonlight’ Reading 3: Oblivion Reading 4: Amnesia and Aphasia in ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’ Reading 5: Hyper-Reminiscence in Je ne parle pas français and ‘A Married Man’s Story’ Conclusion Chapter Four: Mansfield, Mysticism and Cosmic Memory: The Bergsonian Epiphany in ‘Bliss’ Introduction Mysticism Bergson and Mysticism Mansfield and Mysticism Mystical Analogies between Bergson and Katherine Mansfield The Moment Epiphany The Bergsonian Epiphany ‘Bliss’ Conclusion 7 Conclusion Life After Death ‘The Canary’ Bibliography 8 For Mum and Dad, for their love, and without whom I would not have been able to embark on this journey For Sandy, for his love, and with whom I journeyed 9 List of Figures 1 Murry’s drawing of a bookshop projecting the future success of The Aloe 2 Hogarth Press advert for Prelude in the Times Literary Supplement, 1920 3 Bergson’s cone diagram from Matter and Memory 4 The Plane of Dream and Plane of Action 5 The ‘Curve’ of Time 10 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Maggie Humm and Gill Plain, who supported my thesis proposal; Lynne Pearce and Angela Smith for their invaluable insights along the way; members of the Katherine Mansfield community for fellow feeling towards Mansfield, especially Delia Da Sousa Correa, Claire Davison, Janka Kaščáková, Gerri Kimber and Vincent O’Sullivan; Olga Taxidou for our café conversations; Michelle Keown, my second supervisor; and David Farrier and Clare Hanson, my examiners. I would also like to thank Edinburgh University’s Corporate Services Group for the award of a Staff Studentship for this study; and Eddie Clark. Most of all I would like to thank Randall Stevenson whose support, guidance and faith in me have been remarkable and whose brilliant humour has kept me going; my parents for all their support; my sister Carolyn; and always Sandy. 11 Abbreviations and Textual Note CLKM1 The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 1 CLKM2 The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 2 CLKM3 The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 3 CLKM4 The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 4 CLKM5 The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 5 CWKM1 The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 1: The Collected Fiction of Katherine Mansfield, 1898-1915 CWKM2 The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 2: The Collected Fiction of Katherine Mansfield, 1916-1922 CWKM3 The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 3: The Poetry and Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield CWKM4 The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 4: The Diaries of Katherine Mansfield Including Miscellaneous Works Life The Life of Katherine Mansfield M&M Matter and Memory N&N Novels and Novelists Stories The Stories of Katherine Mansfield, Definitive Edition T&FW Time and Free Will TKMN The Katherine Mansfield Notebooks TSMR The Two Sources of Morality and Religion Katherine Mansfield’s use of spelling and punctuation conventions was often idiosyncratic. Rather than scatter ‘[sic]’ through the text, I have retained Mansfield’s usage throughout. 12 In quotations, points indicating an ellipsis have been enclosed in square brackets; points that occur in the original text have been retained. I have italicised the stories Prelude and Je ne parle pas français on the grounds that both stories were published first as individual books. This practice also defers to the two-volume edition of Katherine Mansfield’s fiction published by Edinburgh University Press. From issue 5, Katherine Mansfield Studies has been published as a book rather than a journal. For referencing, I have used MHRA Style Guide: A Handbook for Authors and Editors, 3rd edn (London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2013). 13 Introduction In May 1907 Katherine Mansfield took notes on her reading, apparently, of Edmund Parish’s Hallucinations and Illusions: A Study of the Fallacies of Perception.1 At the age of nineteen she exhibits an interest in the mind and its habits, of having cognisance of an object, of passing from image to language. Juxtaposed with these reading notes is a vivid, metaphorical description of her perceptions of her surroundings, of the brooding twilight shining through the window onto her personal possessions, her books, her pictures, her ’cello, which are all enlivened by the light. Mansfield feels the weight of the past on the present; she recalls her life until it seems not merely one life, but a ‘thousand millions lives’, comprising present, past and an ‘uneasy consciousness of future strivings’ (p.