The Collected Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield (Wordsworth Classics)

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Katherine Mansfield (October 14, 1888 – January 9, 1923), best known for her mastery of the short story form, was born in Wellington, New Zealand as Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp. a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Woods, Joanna (2007). "Katherine Mansfield, 1888–1923". Kōtare. Victoria University of Wellington. 7 (1): 68–98. doi: 10.26686/knznq.v7i1.776 . Retrieved 13 October 2008. In “Prelude,” the reader enters the consciousness of several members of the family as they adjust to a new house in the country. (The Beauchamps moved from Wellington to Karori in 1893.) The reader is led into the minds of the child Kezia (the character who resembles the author as a girl), her hearty father (Stanley), her pregnant mother (Linda), and her unfulfilled aunt (Beryl). Their relations are strained, and they reveal their hopes, loves, and anxieties. Gradually, Mansfield’s emphasis becomes clear. She gives most weight to Linda and Beryl, whose inner worlds invite a range of analysis. Analysis begins with the aloe tree. Mansfield had earlier prepared readers for this huge, ugly, ominous growth, which flowers only once every hundred years. Readers sense that the tree is somehow symbolic. Linda is fascinated by it. When she sees the tree by moonlight, its cruel thorns seem to embody the hate that she often feels, or do they embody the masculine force that she hates? Either way, the aloe tree brings out for the reader the secret that Linda keeps from everyone else: Alongside her other emotions (dislike for her children, love and concern for her husband) is pure hatred. She wonders what Stanley would think of that. Beryl, too, has her secret self. The story ends with her taking an inventory of her attractive qualities and wondering if she can ever get beyond her poses, her false life, to the warm authentic life that she thinks is still within her. Mansfield’s apparently haphazard plot has in fact been drawing the reader to two striking female visions. At the Bay The old people sat on the bench, still as statues. Never mind, there was always the crowd to watch. To and fro, in front of the flower-beds and the band rotunda, the couples and groups paraded, stopped to talk, to greet, to buy a handful of flowers from the old beggar who had his tray fixed to the railings. Now there came a little “flutey” bit—very pretty!—a little chain of bright drops. She was sure it would be repeated. It was; she lifted her head and smiled.

LM (1971). Katherine Mansfield: The Memories of LM. Michael Joseph; reprinted by Virago Press 1985. ISBN 0-86068-745-7. LM was "Lesley Morris", which was the pen name of Mansfield's friend Ida Constance Baker. This first instalment contains three surprising love stories: Marriage a la Mode, Something Childish & Very Natural and Bliss. Although it was so brilliantly fine—the blue sky powdered with gold and great spots of light like white wine splashed over the Jardins Publiques—Miss Brill was glad that she had decided on her fur. The air was motionless, but when you opened your mouth there was just a faint chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip, and now and again a leaf came drifting—from nowhere, from the sky.

Many lovers and tortured relationships

Maxim Gorky, Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Andreev, translated by Mansfield, Koteliansky, and Leonard Woolf (London: Hogarth Press, 1934; New York: Howard Fertig, 1995). Perhaps pointing to the unknowability of other people, “Psychology” points to the early twentieth century’s fascination with the emerging science of psychology. Such was the fascination that the twentieth century is sometimes referred to as the Freudian century – and it is no coincidence, therefore, that dreams feature heavily in “Prelude.” It was like some one playing with only the family to listen; it didn’t care how it played if there weren’t any strangers present. Wasn’t the conductor wearing a new coat, too? She was sure it was new. He scraped with his foot and flapped his arms like a rooster about to crow, and the bandsmen sitting in the green rotunda blew out their cheeks and glared at the music. Marvin Magalaner, The Fiction of Katherine Mansfield (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971). At Fontainebleau, Mansfield lived at G. I. Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, where she was put under the care of Olgivanna Lazovitch Hinzenburg (who later married Frank Lloyd Wright). As a guest rather than a pupil of Gurdjieff, Mansfield was not required to take part in the rigorous routine of the institute, [26] but she spent much of her time there with her mentor Alfred Richard Orage, and her last letters inform Murry of her attempts to apply some of Gurdjieff's teachings to her own life. [27]

Many of Mansfield’s short stories focus on those estranged or isolated by society, in particular women. Bliss is about a young woman struggling to understand her own newly discovered sexuality, Miss Brill concerns an impoverished, lonely spinster and Pictures a struggling singer who is forced to turn to prostitution . Mansfield wrote at a time when women, and some men, were questioning traditional gender roles. The movement for women’s suffrage was demanding political equality, the spread of psychoanalytical theories increasingly gave a conceptual framework to female sexuality and writers such as Mansfield, Woolf and Richardson were asserting that they had a voice which needed to be heard. She went on to contribute stories to Rhythm, an avant-garde literary publication. with her partner and husband-to-be, literary critic John Middleton Murray. Mansfield with Monsters (Steam Press, 2012) Katherine Mansfield with Matt Cowens and Debbie Cowens [46] The female narrator, her brother Jo, and their acquaintance Jim are traveling in the heat, looking forward to stopping for refreshment at a place Jim knows. He says the man of the place is generous with his whisky, and the woman is attractive and welcoming. They arrive at a lonely establishment and are greeted by a disheveled woman with a rifle. Matilda is awakened by the wind; it makes her feel unsettled. Her mother doesn’t want her to go to her music lesson because of the high wind, but Matilda wants to go anyway.

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a b Taonga, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage Te Manatu. "Mansfield, Katherine". teara.govt.nz . Retrieved 17 October 2021. The Rivers of China by Alma De Groen, premiered at the Sydney Theatre Company in 1987, Sydney: Currency Press, ISBN 086819171X [44]