Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923)

"I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life – and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do--Georgia O'Keeffe, maverick and painter of flowers.

In this short story, Mansfield paints for us, with exquisite brush strokes of close up detail, of not one but two flowers.

Shrinking violets. Sisters.

The old hateful buzzard of a father dies, leaving this earthly coil by giving his two middle aged unmarried daughters only an angry one-open-eye farewell. Whatever show more will happen to the poor dears who have devoted their lives to his care and his happiness?

First, they learn that their father does not wait, propped up in his bed, to severely chastise them for his funeral expense. That does take them a little to be convinced. It happens by default.

Then they must clear out his things. The first attempt of just opening a drawer or a wardrobe fills each with such certainty that he will jump out that they decide, maybe it's better we wait until another day, and lock the wardrobe behind them, half certain he is in there. But cobwebs will soon enough indicate the true nothingness that now lives in that room.

Also there is that lone servant, Kate, who is a mini tyrant in her own right. Instead of ordering tea after the anxiety of it all, the sisters order, nay, politely beg if she would mind bringing hot water. No need to bother to put in a pot, just two cups and the kettle would be fine, thank you ever so much. Later they commiserate and plot: really we can do without her, can't we? Make our own meals and tea? No decision is needed this day. But later a tiny uprising is tentatively made by one sister against Kate's rudeness. It's the first impromptu attempt at getting the new hang of things.

That is the week following their father's death. Just a week. There will certainly be more and more weeks ahead, wearing black, ever being the dutiful, respectful daughters, while making all decisions they had never before made.

I say give the two timid dears a year. They will become accustomed to not hearing, to not seeing, to not being shadowed by the dark domineering presence--there will be peace and silence and the breaking light of agency.

In the sun for the first time, I predict the two dear flowers will at last bloom, with some trembling, into happiness. show less

I am so happy that I discovered Katherine Mansfield as a writer because I adore the stories in this volume. They have so much real feeling, they are so true to life and character, and I was drawn into most of them with such force. The majority are somewhat sad and deal with insecurities, loss, hope and flawed dynamics between family members or couples - but always with such subtlety and from a cautious and nuanced point of view.
Another aspect I liked is that it is evident that Mansfield show more experimented with different structures and forms, so the writing is more varied. This is most striking in the last story in the collection, "The Lady's Maid", which is told from the point of view of a maid who talks to a visitor - it is a dialogue, but the questions and answers of the visitor are left blank, so that the text reads almost like an inner monologue.
Of course there are a few stories that I liked less than others, but most of them are short masterpieces, and I felt like discovering one gem after the other, admiring Mansfield's observation, her ability to characterize so unobtrusively, yet so on point.
The stories that are most remarkable to me are: "Marriage à la Mode", "The Voyage", "Her First Ball", "The Stranger" and "An Ideal Family". show less

I'm really undecided about this one. It is the journal of Katherine Mansfield, with entries from 1904 to 1921. It's not a diary, in that there aren't entries for each day/date (although she does seem to start each new year more assiduously than she carries on), it also includes unfinished letters, starts of stories, even just paragraphs of stories, as well as a record of events.

And, while i like the way she writes, I found myself not liking her at all. I thought she was selfish and self show more absorbed, at times particularly cruel, particularly to people she owes thanks to, she thinks she is intellectually superior, yet undisciplined and seems to have little in the way of will power and self control. And then there are the times when she is clearly in a depression, thinks herself unable to write, thinks that she is of little worth. I suspect she would have been impossible to live with and wonder if that "artistic temperament" might well have been mental illness, possibly along the lines of manic depression.

And yet, in spite of not finding her an attractive person, I still find myself wanting to read her work. The passages of stories that were started and abandoned have such life and verve in them, that I can't help wanting to see more of that.

The edition I read was published in 1954, an updated version of the first edition of her journal published by her husband (who I don't envy one little bit) in 1927. show less

My first encounter with the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). Short stories were apparently her specialty, and here are 15 of them. Most are concise atmospheric sketches, with an eye for realistic detail. And so it's rather obvious that she's quickly compared to Chekhov. But what a skillful pen! No modernist experiments in her work, but stylistically, the comparison with Joyce (The Dead) and Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway) is certainly valid. I was particularly captivated by her show more insight into social relations: the environments in which her stories take place are usually bourgeois, but in an almost perfidious way she manages to make the indecency in class distinctions tangible. Take – from this collection – the brilliant "Mr. And Mrs. Dove," in which a man and a woman, clearly attracted to each other, are afraid to commit themselves, for fear of social conventions. Or the title story, "The Garden Party," which in many ways could be called a precursor to Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway: ingeniously, she exposes the ambivalence of the bourgeoisie. It’s tragic that Katherine Mansfield died of tuberculosis at the age of 34. show less