On The Tension In Katherine Mansfield's Short Stories

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923), born in New Zealand, lived and wrote in England. She is a central figure in the development of the modern short story. Her short stories are so exquisite that attract more and more attention. Because of her peripheral position as an English writer, she has ambivalent values. Like many of the characters in her fiction, she seems to have been torn between a desire to reject the conventional feminine role and a desire to accept it. As a woman from a rich family, on one hand she has sympathy for the poor, on the other hand she looks down upon them. Her ambivalent values expressed in her fictions that form tension in the stories. Katherine Mansfield is a brilliant rhetorician. She employs rhetoric techniques to express her stories'quintessence and voice her lyrical emotion. The present thesis is intended to study the tension exists in Mansfield's short stories. It consists of three chapters.In Chapter One, the ambivalent values shown in the themes are discussed: Fantasy vs. Reality, Location vs. Dislocation, Love vs. alienation, Dissatisfaction vs. Powerlessness. In Chapter Two, the tension in the rhetoric scenes is discussed: symbolic images, irony and impressionism technique. In Chapter Three the ambivalent values shown in characters are discussed: the tensions between true self and false self, instinct and rationality, purity and impurity are discussed.Finally a conclusion is naturally reached that the tension deepens the meanings of the stories, and enlarges the aesthetic space of her fictions. Mansfield's short stories are poetic. Her symbolic images, her exquisite languages, her plotless narration all show her individuality as a writer. Mansfield revolutionized the 20th century English short story. Her best work shakes itself free of plots and endings and shows rich interior life, the poetry of feeling, the blurred edges of personality. Her open-ended story raised questions about identity, belonging and desire. Mansfield's revolutionary techniques form another kind of tension that exists between reader's expectation and satisfaction. Tensions permeate in Katherine Mansfield's short stories.