The Gender Mask-From Jung's Persona Theory To Mansfield's "Prelude" And "At The Bay"

"Prelude"and"At the Bay"are two of the most famous later New Zealand stories of Katherine Mansfield. In this thesis, I intend to examine four characters of these two stories in light of the persona theory of Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss psychologist, whose most distinguished contribution to psychology is the exploration of collective unconscious and archetype theories. Persona, the masks that people all wear in accordance with the expectations of the society, is one of the most important archetypes that Jung researched. Gender mask, as a part of the persona, is the gender role we must play. The four adult characters: Stanley, Jonathan, Beryl, and Linda all live under the gender mask required by the patriarchal society. They are either beneficiaries or victims, but none of them has the ability to control their fate which has been predicated by the patriarchal society.