Education of the republic of uzbekistan gulistan state university

1.2 Katherine Mansfield’s style of writing


Katherine Mansfield is considered the most talented modern short story writer in English. She is regarded as the pioneer of avant-gardism in the short story. Her writing is psychologically acute, accessible, and innovative. There is clarity and precision in her language. She has a resonant and distilled reaction to the experience. 
She is considered a seminal modernist, and her works are regarded in great esteem. She was able to reach a wide range of audiences because of the brevity of the genre she wrote in, its variety, and accessibility. She had developed a distinctive prose style. Her style had overtones of poetry. Her writing has the influence of Anton Chekhov, which can be seen in the subtlety of observation, in her obliqueness in narration, and delicacy of her stories. Her role in the development of the short story as a form of literature is undeniable.
Her short stories cover a wide range of thematic topics. These topics range from problems and difficulties in families, vulnerable and fragile nature of relationships, rising middle class, and its complexes, and the numbness related to them. Other themes include the extraction of life and energy from ordinary, mundane experiences, and the consequences of war faced by society, etc. 
She was contemporary of great writers like Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and like them, she plays her role in the evolution of the short story. She helped redefine the genre by doing experiments with the genre, themes, and subject matter. She had a prolific career during which she wrote journals, reviews, letters, etc. Her role as a significant modernist writer was recognized after the rise of feminist criticism in the 1970s.
She was a close friend and literary rival of Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf envied her skill as well as the audience that was attracted by her short stories. In sharp contrast to Woolf, Mansfield had an amorphous economic, social, sexual experience that was disapproved by Virginia Woolf. This relationship was not only based on envy; rather, Woolf respected her and communicated with her to learn from her. At her death, Woolf wrote in her diary that Katherine was the only person from whose writing she was jealous.
In her works, she questioned the nature of reality, challenged the certainties. She changed the underpinned facts of Victorian literature and replaced them with modernist attributes. In her works, we see a crucial role of gender where the story is presented from the male perspective while the values are of the female side. Her works focus on the marginalized of society. 
Shortly, her works are concrete, which communicates moods, transient emotions, and impressions, and these make her works seminal.
Katherine’s first collection of short stories is based on sketches where she describes the coarseness and grossness of Germans. Sketches were then popular in journals, and she followed this trend. They described a specific segment of life and had no sufficient theme or plot development. Later changes came to her work as in other short stories; she traversed different topics and themes.
Her short stories are about everyday concerns. They are descriptive, full of imagery, metaphors, and symbols. The characters that she has featured are sensitive and warm-hearted. She wants to make the reader see through the descriptions what she wants to convey and feel a part of it. The descriptions in her short stories are vivid, which covers the minutest details. In her stories, there is a narrative presentation with an element of dialogue.
In her works, there are imperatives, questions, polite requests, exclamations, etc. which show the variety in characters. The language of her short stories is expressive and emotional, and simple. Her works interest the reader through their explorations of psychological detail. Mansfield made a short story a psychological sketch. This genre was considered by many readers and critics as a useless genre. She used it as the ex-centric vehicle of expression, and the estranged vision of women. She didn’t completely reject the conventions of short story writing rather made amends to the form. In conformity to literary modernism, she rejected conventional dramatic action and plot structure in favor of the character.⁵
She retains her distinction from other modernists by not completely following the modernist tenets. Typical modernist issues like anomie, guilt, anxiety are not her only concerns. She has sardonic comments about sophistication. There are not only internal problems of mind, rather the common life problems as well, such as unhappiness, poverty, etc. shown in her works like Life of Ma Parker, Pictures.
There is a spiritual search in her work and a longing to return to the world of childhood, which added new dimensions to the modernist short story. She was a professional, lifetime writer. Her narrative technique has several elements. Her short stories develop with the passage of time into slices of life. She offers miniatures which present an aspect of life true in the case of whole life. Her stories are apparently simple, but on the internal level, there are subversive attitudes and themes. There is mention of the ‘unmentionable’ aspects of life which are hidden in her carefully chosen lexicon.
These ironically subversive themes cover the criticism of conventional relationships, small-mindedness, and prejudice. There are some characters who narrate the interior monologue in a single text. She develops an appropriate narrative strategy and a distinctive voice for each character. She had a gift for impersonation, which relates to her experience as an actress.
She uses many grammatical devices that include exclamation, rhetorical question, the unfinished sentence, abrupt shift in syntax, etc. Her short stories in different collections abound with these features.
‘Nouvelle-instant’ or commonly known as ‘slices of life,’ is her most common dramatic technique that she uses in her works. It is the technique in which the action is brief and occupies a few moments. In her first collection, German Pension, she uses this technique in nine out of thirteen stories. This hallmark technique is further strengthened in her later works, where it is used in 12 stories in Bliss, 14 in The Garden Party, 5 in The Dove’s Nest, and 8 in Something Childish.
This technique is divided further into two types, which include habitual and unique moments. The former type refers to happenings that are usual while the later to the happenings taking place once in life. ‘In medias res’ is another technique that she uses in her works; this is the reference to the foreknowledge of happenings. In longer stories like The Prelude, At the Bay, etc. she has made divisions based on scenes. She refers to this moment as the ‘blazing moment,’ and it is related to the idea of ‘nouvelle-instant.’ Epiphany has the power to emphasize the unattractive reality which underlies human feelings. This technique is prominent in her short story Bliss. In this short story behind the sense of bliss, there are uncomfortable feelings of self-discovery. In Bliss, the protagonist and her husband have an epiphany at two different moments. They come to realize that they will not be there, but the tree that is there will remain even after them.Another example is from her short story, At the Bay. In this work, the protagonist recognizes that the person she is flirting with is a womanizer. There is a profound realization in Mansfield’s epiphanic moments. It is not necessarily understood by the characters but is clearly perceived by the reader.
Katherine Mansfield was greatly influenced by post-impressionist art. This impressionistic technique she transposed in her own literary works. This technique was employed in Literature with Naturalism. It was an attempt to present things with minimum efforts. Bates notes that it was the view that if a woman can be presented through her hands, then there is no need to portray the complete picture. Mansfield was the first writer who shaped it as a suitable technique to be used in a short story.
She prefers vignette to complete description, has a preoccupation with color, and lays emphasis on reflections and surfaces. She used these to alter perceptions; there is transition seen from present to past, to future. This is used as a metaphorical threshold, which helps in realization. A significant example is from The Tiredness of Rosabell, where a mirror is used to realize the harsh reality and even dream a fairy-tale scenario. Her short story Bank Holiday is an example which is wholly an example of a vignette. 
Mansfield had accepted influences from French Symbolist and Decadent movements. She, like Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and Arthur Symons is of the view that instead of descriptive analysis of abstract states of mind, concrete images should be used. Her symbolist work is essentially poetic and metaphorical in nature. One story in which this notion is signified is Miss Brill. These symbols are considered a powerful tool through which the reader is encouraged to discover the character’s development.
Flowers are used as a symbol in her short story The Garden Party, which represents sexuality. These are indicative of the end of innocence, and the corrupting effect on the characters. In Prelude and At the Bay, she uses the aloe plant as a symbol. It carries with itself a sense of mystery, troubles, and childlike concerns in the real world. It also signifies pains and intimidating fears of a lifetime. ⁶
In Mansfield’s short stories, there is the frequent use of humor noticed. She, through her use of psychological subtlety and narrative art and metaphorical flair, produces the effect of humor by capturing the nuances of consciousness. In her life, Katherine was known for being an amusing companion, and the same is seen in her literary works. It was her devotion to Oscar Wilde that perfected this art. 
Sarcastic and brittle comedic examples of her humor can be seen in her short story Bliss. In this story, two characters talk about tomato soup and its presence everywhere; the reason that is told for its presence is being eternal.
Her humor is a satire on the pseudo-intellectuals who say things that are of no value. She mimics the dandified tone of upper-class society. She mocks the depiction of grandiose by the use of ‘affected’ idiolects. An example of it is the ridiculous accent of Nurse Andrews from The Daughters of the Late Colonel. His snobbish character is known in few humorous sentences which wouldn’t have been done in long descriptions. 
In her last works, Mansfield used esoteric imagery to describe the ironic self-discovery. She has a feminine approach as she presents her subconscious understanding of the universe through recurring symbols. In her work, the imagery of the moon is allied to mysterious and feminine. Sun is associated with the masculine.
She read a book Cosmic Anatomy on the Structure of Ego a year before death. This had a great influence on her because she took the notions of the opposition of sun and moon from this, which she used in her works. Under the influence of this book, she wrote the story Sun and Moon. It was written in 1918 and represented Blake’s concepts of beauty and innocence. This short story is considered a masterpiece of ironic exposé.
Sea is also used as a feminine symbol in her works. It is considered a feminine response which is allied to the moon. It is used in her work At the Bay, where it is employed to show Beryl’s moment of epiphany.
In her works, feminist issues are presented as a recurring motif. She exhibits the discontinuity between male and female experiences. There is a feminist awareness running throughout her works. Though she was not an open suffragette, her works talk about the problems that are faced by feminine gender. Her earlier critics were unable to discern feminist issues in her works. If her works are deeply analyzed, there are two recurring themes in her every work, viz. money, and love.
An example of her story with feminist issues is the Life of Ma Parker. She considers money as a source of independence; if a woman is deprived of money, then it is an attempt to deprive her of freedom. In her other stories, there is a harsh polemic about a lot of women.