Home In Dream

Katherine Mansfield( 1888-1923) is a woman writer who enjoys the reputation of "a master of short stories". She is a central figure in the development of the modern short stories.Mansfield's highly regarded New Zealand stories are partly collected in Bliss, and Other Stories and The Garden Party, and Other Stories, including Prelude(1917), The Voyage(1921), Her First Ball(1921), At the Bay(1922), The Garden Party(1922) and The Doll's House(1922) in The Dove's Nest and Other Stories. They are stories which Mansfield saw as part of "novel" to be called "Karori", and which in fact form two story cycles, one about the Sheridan family, and one about the Burnells. Apart from these later New Zealand stories, the New Zealand stories also include a group of early stories written at Murry's(her husband) request, which are The Woman at the Store(1911), How Pearl Button was Kidnapped(1912), New Dresses(1912), The Little Girl(1912), Ole Underwood (1913), Millie (1913).There is scarcely an artist in history whose life is not reflected in some significant way in his work. In Katherine Mansfield's case, her New Zealand childhood and experience are clearly reflected in her New Zealand stories. The life as source is regarded as the first feature in the New Zealand stories. From the experience of her native land-New Zealand, Mansfield shapes her stories. She often uses her memories to create fiction, but her New Zealand stories are not transcripts of her life. No matter what is the precise autographical details, Mansfield recreates her remote homeland. Real events and people are shaped and manipulated to fit the impression she wish to create.As a New Zealand expatriate, Mansfield suffered a permanent sense of homelessness, rootlessness and alienation. Her New Zealand stories reflect her feeling of homelessness. She could not go home again, but her imaginative would often returns. In this sense, we can see that Mansfield uses her memories about her homeland to recreate a "home in thought".And Mansfield's status as a New Zealand expatriate also bring her the ambivalent position and the binary opposition(another feature) in her New Zealand stories. In her short career, Katherine Mansfield holds two roles: the modernist artist stayed out of the circle of metropolitan literature as well as the modernist out of the circle of colonial literature. Her position is really a dilemma, or something in-between. And in the New Zealand stories, the binary opposition between colonial and metropolitan is clearly reflected. Especially in the later New Zealand stories, Mansfield recreates her remote homeland with London's perspective. The colony and the metropolis have been mixed together in her art.As to the theme in the New Zealand stories, this thesis focus on two pairs of juxtaposition themes-the female-male conflicts and the paradox of life and death. To some degree, such juxtaposition themes also represent Mansfield's dual identity.Mansfield's later New Zealand stories are considered among the finest short stories in the English language. These stories display some of Mansfield's most successful innovations with narrative technique. Her indirect-free narrative mode unique in her time, her use of images and symbols, her use of slice of life distinguish her from her contemporary writers. So through her New Zealand stories Katherine Mansfield has made her own contribution to the modern short stories.