Katherine Mansfield: A Feminist Pioneer

Katherine Mansfield, a prominent New Zealand-born English writer of the twentieth century, was one of the several writers in the history of British literature who had committed themselves to the writing of short stories and who had established their fame through this genre. She developed the plotless story and employed modernist techniques in the short story writing, thus helping shape the modern short story form and contributing to its popularity in England. Apart from the critiques on her writing techniques, the delicate style and poetic language of her stories are also the major concerns of her critics.Nevertheless, the feminist depth within Mansfield's stories has not been given enough consideration until recently when feminist critics such as Sydney Janet Kaplan and Kate Fullbrook begin to explore Mansfield's feminist themes. This thesis attempts to reveal Mansfield's feminist views displayed in her short stories so as to prove that Mansfield was actually a feminist pioneer who deserved a more secured position in the development of feminism.Mansfield was not a feminist theorist. Throughout her life, she never studied any feminist theories, nor did she formulate any theory herself. But her short stories serve as the best stage to present her feminist views.In her works, Mansfield thrusts sharp criticism at the patriarchal system that uses its values to confine women to their inferior position in the family and society. By presenting the lives of women at different life stages, Mansfield reveals how patriarchal values function to restrain and victimize women, and how these social values debase and persecute those who refuse to yield and who struggle for their self-identity and dignity. In addition, Mansfield's male characters, from another angle, reflect the oppression and plight heaped upon women in the patriarchal society. Most of the men characters in her stories are satirized or indicted, some for their selfishness and insensitivity, others for their irresponsible behavior, and still some for their evil and predatory nature. The results of their respectively despicable deeds are women'ssufferings of all kinds.Mansfield's short stories also reveal her feminist ideals. Mansfield holds that the relationships between women and men are always subject to hostility and conflict since patriarchy determines men's domination and women's submission. What Mansfield proposes is a connection between women and men in which both sexes abandon their conventional roles and reach a consensus in the commonality of human conditions. Besides, Mansfield believes that women should rely on their own efforts to break the ideological fetters that bind them both physically and mentally. But she expresses her disagreement with two modes of women's attempt to rebel against patriarchy — identifying with male elements or dominating men, which she thinks leads to no real liberation. And the girl-child character Kezia, with her rebellious nature to overthrow the established order, to obtain intelligence and independence, and to break patriarchal codes, is actually the embodiment of Mansfield's hope for women's real freedom in the future.Therefore, Katherine Mansfield's revelation and condemnation of the oppression and humiliations that women suffer in the patriarchal society and her exploration of women's liberation prove that this woman writer was actually a feminist pioneer.