Shift Of Points Of View In Katherine Mansfield’s Short Stories

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is regarded as one of the masters of short stories in English literary history. Winning the same reputation as James Joyce, she distinguished herself by devoting her business to exploring writing techniques. With a lot of research on her previous works, academic studies on her short stories have been clarified into different fields. As for the point of view she employed in her stories, the study concerning depth and insight seems limited and deserves a further exploration. This thesis aims to analyze Katherine Mansfield’s writing strategy based on several of her short stories by taking narrative theories in terms of focal character’s point of view. The main body consists of three chapters:chapter one analyzes the artistic function of using children’s point of view to present the theme of equality; chapter two further explores her strategy of shifting children’s point of view to female adults’ for a better expression of the theme of disillusionment and chapter three discusses the paradox of death by comparing and contrasting both children’s and adults’points of view. The author believes that taking the focal character as a carrier and further searching into each abiding theme are the key of her literary success.