Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923)

Many of the stories lack a conventional narrative structure. They have characters and things happen to those characters but rarely is there a set up, a conflict, or a resolution. "Stories" probably isn't even the right word. Tableau is perhaps closer, but even that isn't quite right because the characters are not posed, motionless against a static background. These are more like early 20th century versions of animated gifs or video shorts: brief, without a clear beginning or end but clearly show more thematic and capable of conveying a feeling or a mood, if not a message. But for the sake of clarity, I'll just call them stories.

Mansfield's stories are glimpses of lives caught in the development of an emotion or a feeling, and she paints those emotions with lovely, selective descriptions of scenes and with snippets of thoughts and speech. Sometimes the writing is detailed and textured and sometimes very sketchy. The dialogue and inner monologues of characters catch them in mid-thought or mid-conversation. But the words and the images evoked convey those emotions and feelings with great clarity.

By turns the stories offer meditations on guilt, sadness, fondness, remembrance, regret, pride, loneliness, and anticipation. Often, the point is not to say something about those feelings but to invite the reader to experience them in some parallel way. And despite the ostensive subject matter of these stories which will seem more or less relatable to some modern readers (e.g., garden parties, balls, sea voyages) they still manage to evoke an everydayness about them which makes the emotion and feeling recognizable and easy to try on.

This was good bedtime reading, when my brain could not handle anything requiring sustained concentration or a complicated plot to follow. After a few pages my mind would wander to reflect on my own connections to the stories only to drift back and easily find my way back in to the book. show less

"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 firmly believe that Katherine Mansfield was truly a master of short fiction that I have yet to see matched. I was extremely excited to find this copy "in the wild" (a.k.a. used book store) as her work tends to go through phases of being hailed by authors followed by periods of virtual anonymity.

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