The art of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories
Katherine Mansfield was one of the most famous
women writers in the early 20th century. In some sense,
she was also the real founder of the literary of the New
Zealand nation. She was born in Wellington, New
Zealand in Oct. 1888. At the age of 14 she went to
London to study at Queen’s College. During the three
years of studies she often wrote short stories for the
college journal. As she was dissatisfied with the dull and
leisured life of her family. She went to London again in
1908 and determined on writing as her career. Since then
she lively mostly in England. In 1923 she died of
tuberculosis in France. During her short 35 years of life,
she had written some poems, literature comment, and
also translated the Russian writer Anton Chekhov’s
works, but what really established her fame as a
prominent writer were her short stories.
It had been a tradition in English literature that short
story, as a short literary form, was often overlooked by
people. James Joyce, Mansfield’s contemporary, was not
accepted by people in England when his short story
collection “Dubliners” came out. D. H. Lawrence,
Virginia Woolf, and many other contemporaries,
achieved their success by long novels. But Katherine
Mansfield managed to establish her reputation by short
stories only. She dedicated her whole life to this literary
type, left behind us rare art treasure.
Mansfield’s short stories showed great ingenuity.
She drew materials from her own experience, chose
trifles as her subjects. Her theme was confined but
significant to life: the growth and self-consciousness of
the female; the relation between men and women;
children’s innocence and the cruelty of the reality. She
pursued high writing techniques, the four of which were:
description of details; more atmosphere than plot and the
perfect blend of feeling and setting; interior monologue;
symbol. Her language was written in a prose style spiced
with poetic flavour.
There is a tradition lies in the creation of fictions in
English literature: The writer often gathered materials
from his own early or past experience. “Katherine
Mansfield never wrote things that were not experienced
by herself. Every thing in her fiction, undoubtedly, were
based on her own experience.”1 Most of Mansfield’s
subjects were recollections of her family and her
childhood spent in New Zealand. In her total less than a
hundred articles, about 60 were at the background of
New Zealand. Choosing trifles as subjects was also the
similarity among women writers. Jane Austin’s fiction
plot originated from several families in the country.
Katherine Mansfield’s plot seemed to develop in
narrower surrounding which was not conspicuous: one
family, subtle relations among a few family members,
etc. So the theme she discussed in her fictions was not
grand or extensive. They were mainly confined in these
aspects: the growth and self-consciousness of the female;
the relation between men and women; children’s
innocence and the cruelty of the reality.
There were a series of female characters in
Mansfield’s stories. Rosabel in “The tiredness of
Rosabel” was a teenager. She viewed the complicated
world with her innocent and childish eyesight. The
young women appeared in “Miss Brill” and “Picture”.
Their ideals always conflict of the reality. Ma Parker in
“The life of Ma Parker” was a representative of the old
women, who had experience the happiness and hardship
of life, the understanding and estrangement of human
world, the beauty and ugliness, joy and suffering.
Mansfield wrote not many stories about men and
women. In these stories, the writer mixed into her own
misfortune with men and drew this conclusion: man and
woman won’t have happy and satisfactory endings
because woman is always the sacrifice of cold and
domineering man. “The little Governess”, “The Flower”,
“The man without a temperament” “Jene Parle Pas
Francais” belong to this kind.
Stories on children constitute half of her total
creation. To a great extent, they were based on the
writer’s recollections of her own childhood. In such
stories, she discussed the subtle relationship that was
simple but hard to understand between children and
children, children and adults. “Sixpence” described the
punishment and forgiveness of the father to the child.
“Her first ball” depicted the first association of the girl
with the adult society. “At the bay” wrote one day the
children spent with the whole family in a seaside villa. In
“The garden party”, the children touched the dark side of
society at the first time. “The doll’s house” showed us
the influence of the social class on children. Mansfield
described the children’s inner world vividly, exquisitely
and acutely. Her New Zealand stories on children
account for the most important part of her contributions
to art.
Though the materials were not extensive, the theme
was confined, Katherine Mansfield expressed her love
and hatred. To express the theme explicitly, she used
very high writing technique. One of which worth
mentioning is her description of details. Mansfield laid
stress on describing details, she regarded details as “the
lives in life”. But it’s not easy to explore “the lives in
life” since not all common trifles had this feature. It must
have something fresh, something attractive on itself. The
writer’s observation must be sharp so that he could
capture it from the kaleidoscopic life. Katherine
Mansfield had an uncommon ability of this kind. In “Sun
and Moon”, before the dinner, Sun and Moon saw a table
of beautifully furnished food. They were even joyful
when they saw a plate of ice pudding in the refrigeration.
“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”. They
went to the dining--room. They were almost frightened.
“…all the lights were red roses. 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. “That’s where
the ice pudding is to be,” said cook. Two silver lions
with wings had fruit on their backs, and the salt cellars
were tiny birds drinking out of basins. And all the
winking glasses and shinning plates and sparkling knives
and forks—and all the food. And the little red table
napkins made into roses…” These descriptions of details
displayed the children’s fairyland, their illusion. But
when the children went back to the beautiful dining—
room after dinner, “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 peel and shells
everywhere. There was even a bottle lying down with
stuff coming out of it on to the clothe 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.” “I think it’s
horrid—horrid—horrid!” Sun sobbed.” The child’s
illusion had been destroyed. “wailing loudly, Sun
stumped off to the nursery!” These vivid descriptions of
details, under the writer’s ingenious arrangement, gave
readers intense artistic appeal.
Katherine
Mansfield’s
short
stories
had
the
characteristic of impressionism. It did not stress on the
dramatization of the story or the completeness of the
plot, but concerned more on atmosphere and the
expressing of feelings. Her plot was rather simple and
sometime there’s hardly any plot. While reading her
stories, we always just can’t tell what the story was like,
what we remembered deeply was the atmosphere and
feelings in the story, and the sense we experienced. In
her story emotion and scene were blended happily to
reach an artistic conception, her own poetic artistic
conception.
Mansfield’s “The first ball” described the mood of a
girl, Lira, when she at the first time took part in a ball.
Literally, Mansfield described nothing else except the
simple conditions of what lira saw in the ball and her
mood. “If we ask when the ball begin, lira thought it was
hard to answer.” It began when she sat down in the
carriage. In fact, it began when she made up at home.
How excited she was! She was so excited that she almost
dared not go to the ball. While dancing “an old
experienced man” make her realize that the first ball was
but the beginning of the last ball, she was depressed. Just
for politeness, she had to accept another invitation to
dance, but at once she got excited again. She couldn’t
recognize “the veteran” who woke her up. The story
ended in lira’s cheerful dance. The story was ended, but
the atmosphere created by lira’s change of emotion still
affected readers. Isn’t the life so? Clearly knowing the
first ball was but the beginning of the last ball, we still
wait for it cheerfully. It’s natural, and it should be.
Mansfield was also good at describing scene. Her
another short story “At the bay” drew materials form her
retrospection of the early life in New Zealand. One and
another single parts which were segmented each other
constituted a complete picture of a day’s life. It showed
the life’s rhythm and tone from day to night of a very
representative New Zealand family. With her keen
observation, the writer depicted every small picture. In
this story, before the main characters appeared the writer
cost several paragraphs on depicting the beautiful
scenery of the early morning. The light mist at the bay,
the dew on the flowers and grass, the breeze, the singing
bird, the sheep flock, the herder and his dog. It’s like a
piece of delicate water-color picture, a soft song.
The scene she described was the real objective
scene in eyesight, meantime, was the imaginative scene
in heart. The relation of the two was that of interweave of
the scene and the character’s inner activities. Only by so,
the moving effect of the blend of feeling and setting can
be achieved. Mansfield never wrote scenes alone. She
poured her own emotion into the description of the bay.
At the beginning of “The wind blows”, a sad
atmosphere caught us at once. “Suddenly—dreadfully-she wakes up. What has happened? Something dreadful
has happened. No—nothing has happened. It is only the
wind shaking the house, rattling the windows, banging a
piece of iron on the roof and making her bed tremble.
Leaves flutter past the window, up and away; down in
the avenue a whole newspaper wags in the air like a lost
kite and falls, spiked on a pine tree. It is old. Summer is
over—it is autumn—everything is ugly….” Then the
tone became more sorrow. “In waves, in clouds, in big
round whirls the dust comes stinging, and with it little
bits of straw and chaff and manure. There is a loud
roaring sound from the trees in the gardens, and standing
at the bottom of the road outside Mr Bullen’s gate she
can hear the sea sob: “Ah!….Ah!….Ah-h!”. In the last
part of this story, the brother and sister went for a walk
round the esplanade. “It’s getting very dark. In the
habour the coal hulks show two lights—one high on a
mast, and one form the stern” “A big black steamer with
a long loop of smoke streaming, with the portholes
lighted, with lights everywhere, is putting out to sea. The
wind does not stop her; she cuts through the waves,
making for the open gate between the pointed rocks that
leads to…It’s the light that makes her look so awfully
beautiful and mysterious…They are on board leaning
over the rail arm in arm.” “Now the dark stretches a wing
over the tumbling water. They can’t see those two any
more. Goodbye, goodbye. Don’t forget…But the ship is
gone, now. The wind—the wind.” By means of the
description of the scene, the writer’s endless mourning
for her beloved brother Chummie, Bogey in this story,
deeply moved reader’s heart.
Katherine Mansfield was also a pioneer in the
interior monologue, which her contemporaries James
Joyce and Virginia Woolf developed in their works as
stream-of-consciousness technique. She did her utmost to
present the character’s interior world, and she tried her
best to capture the moment when human’s heart had a
sudden consciousness of life and oneself. The creation
principle she obeyed all her life was to “melt into the
character”. She considered she must be the thing itself
before describing and re-creating one thing. “When I
described duck, I swear, I’m also a white duck with
round eyes swimming in the yellow foam bubbling pool,
occasionally having a quick glimpse of my inverted
reflection in water.”2 When she wrote “The stranger” she
felt as if she had stood in the port and waited for several
hours herself. When writing “The journey” she became
“Valena, hanging the swan-necked umbrella”. In
Mansfield’s works, the writer never appeared as a
narrator, but completely melt into the heart of the
character she created, thought in their intonations and
ways. In “The little governess”, the writer adopted a pure
childish girl’s feeling and sight to observe and
experience the surrounding world. The first sentence in
the story “Oh, dear, how she wished that it wasn’t nighttime. She’d have much rather travelled by day, much
much rather.” vividly transmitted a young girl’s speaking
manner and psychology. Towards the rude porter she met
in the station, she affirmed: “He is a robber!” The old
man in the train was “Ninety at least”. Just by a few
words, the writer sketched a girl’s knowledge and tone.
In the girl’s eye, “fat, fat coachmen driving fat cabs”, “a
policeman standing in the middle like a clockwork
doll”… All these soaked a child’s childishness and
liveliness, a childish heart was expressed so vividly,
cordially and movingly.
“The canary” is an excellent example of her using
interior monologue technique. The character was a lonely
woman, only a lovely canary accompanied her all day.
The whole story is her interior monologue she spoke to
the bird case after the bird died. The character loved the
canary so sincerely and intensively that only the bird’s
song can give her some comfort when she felt lonely.
When the canary sang, she felt working is also enjoyable.
Through the inner monologue a person living in the
hostile world appeared before our eyes.
“Miss Brill” narrates one day the spinster, Miss Brill
spent in the park. Sitting in the park and observing
people at weekends is the only happy thing in her
tedious, lonely life. That day she wore her leather scarf
specially and went to the park as usual, she sat on her
usual bench and observing coming and going people
happily to enjoy her long-expected time. But a couple of
young men abused her just for her existence. She realized
suddenly that she was ugly and unwelcome. When she
put her scarf back into the box, she heard something
crying. —That’s her heart crying. Here the inner
monologue is used to explore the character’s inner world,
and the deep consciousness of the essence of life is
perceived.
The artistic technique of symbol is also Mansfield’s
favourite. In Mansfield’s stories we can find many
details she described had their symbol meaning besides
narration. The ice pudding in “Sun and Moon”
symbolized children’s illusion to life. Although the
pudding house is lovely and beautiful, it’s food for
people to eat, so the ice pudding also indicates Sun’s
disillusion is unavoidable.
Bertha Young, the heroine in “Bliss”, was always
intoxicated with the bliss of her family. In her garden,
“there was a tall, slender pear tree in fullest, richest
bloom; it stood perfect, as though becalmed against the
jade-green sky…it had not a single bud or a faded petal.”
“And she seemed to see on her eyelids the lovely pear
tree with its wide open blossoms as a symbol of her own
life.” But one day she found unwittingly her husband and
her girl friend betrayed her. Her feeling of bliss
disappeared completely. She cried: “what is going to
happen now?” But “the pear tree was as lovely as ever
and as full of flower and as still.” It deepened her agony.
The pear tree, once the symbol of the illusion of the
beauty of life, finally turned into the symbol of darkness,
ugliness and deception.
Katherine Mansfield spared no effect in pursuing
writing techniques. She was rigorous in her creative
work, carefully and strictly choosing every word, every
sentence, revising each story again and again until she
was satisfied. In a letter to John Mury3 she said she
would rather rewrite the whole article just for one word.
Due to her hard work, the words under her pen seemed to
have some magic power, they can arouse your vision,
your hearing, your smelling and touch… She wanted “At
the bay” to have some fish-like smell.4 “Turkish bath” to
have a “wet, damp, soft like mud feeling”.5 When she
wrote “Miss Brill”, she chose not only the length of each
sentence, but also the rhyme and rhythm of each
sentence. “I also deliberate the ups and downs of each
paragraph. This is to coincide with her, at the special
time on that day, I read it aloud after I finished—for
many times—like a man playing instrument, tried to get
nearer and nearer to the behaviour of Miss Brill until it
coincides.”6 By means of her intelligence and diligence,
her language had the elegance of prose and the
conciseness of poem.
In “Prelude”, Scene 5, the writer described the
natural beauty of her homeland like these: “Down came
sharp and chill with red clouds on a faint green sky and
drops of water on every leaf and blade. A breeze blew
over the garden, dropping dew and dropping petals,
shivered over the drenched paddocks, and was lost in the
sombre bush. In the sky some tiny stars floated for a
moment and then they were gone—they were dissolved
like bubbles. And plain to be heard in the early quiet was
the sound of the creek in the paddock running over the
brown stones, running in and out of the sandy hollows,
hiding under dumps of dark berry bushes, spilling into a
swamp of yellow water flowers and cresses.” From these
words we could smell the fragrance of flowers, the sound
of water, and as the writer wished, we are deeply touched
by the poetic language.
Mansfield’s lifetime was full of frustrations: the
unhappy first marriage, the loss of her beloved brother
and the torment of disease etc. But she threw herself into
the short-story writing with love and passion. Her
creation works showed that English short story, as an art
form on its own, proceeded to its mature stage in
England in the early 20th century. It got rid of the
traditional pattern of story narration plus sermon, strode
into the era of revealing the world by sketching inner
spirits. As early as in 1927, her short stories were
translated into Chinese by the famous poet Xu Zhimo.
The poet sang highly of her. In his eyes, Mansfield’s
figure represented the delicate and elegant feminine
image. In his elegy to Mansfield, he described her death
as “bright shining tear dropped from the sky.”7
NOTES
1.
Gordon,Ian:
Katherine
Mansfield;
Macmillan
2. Letter to Blaite on Oct. 11. 1917
3. Letter to John Mury on Oct. 11.1920
4. Letter to Blaite on Aug. 8. 1921
London:
5. Mansfield, Katherine:Diary on Nov. 21 1921
6. Letter to Richard Mury: Jan. 17 1921
Xu Zhimo: Line 2;Elegy to Mansfield