Tension Between Two Worlds: On Peter Pan Complex In Katherine Mansfield's Works

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923), the master of English short story in early 20th century, gained worldwide popularity with her five volumes of stories, in which she portrayed a number of children and psychologically immature female images with the view and psyche of a child.This dissertation is an exploration of Katherine Mansfield's Peter Pan complex: the formation and reflection of Peter Pan complex in her personal life and its implication in her short stories by employing the approach of psychoanalysis and focusing on her main short stories to analyze the themes and typical characters in the stories, in relation to her letters, journals as well as her biography.According to Jung, complex is the repressed but continuing presence in an adult's unconscious. It is formed because of the individual's outer and inner conflicts and greatly influenced by one's growing experiences and living environment. Mansfield's free and pure childhood in New Zealand, her wandering poverty-stricken adult life in Europe, her turbulent love experiences and her anxiety to death had great influence on her formation of personality. She expressed her Peter Pan complex in her fiction to overcome her personal conflicts and repressions by creating innocent child images and childish female characters which reflect Mansfield's rebellious, illusive and exceptional personality as well as her desire, fear, anxiety and dreams.In her fiction, Mansfield emphasized the sharp contrasts between the child world and the adult world: innocence versus degeneration, fantasy versus disillusionment, freedom versus duty, life versus death. By indulging herself into writing, she tries to come back to her free and pure childhood to overcome or escape her fear and anxiety and to obtain some comfort and consolation. That is actually a"tragic optimism"—to put all the hope into the past and consider it the most valuable part of one's life—so that one could keep a mental balance in real life.