The Men Behind The Mask

Katherine Mansfield is New Zealand's most famous writer as well as a prominent modernist writer of short fiction, and her works remain among the most widely read in world literature. Since the 1980s, her writing has given rise to a number of critical approaches:thematic, formal, biographical, historical, feminist, symbolist, modernist, and cultural. However, the male characters in her short stories have not been paid due attention to, except some unsystematic studies. In order to supplement the research in this field, the author intends to analyze the male characters in Katherine Mansfield's short stories by the application of Jung's persona theory.The thesis can be divided into four parts. In Chapter One, some background information is introduced. In Chapter Two, three male characters who over-identify with the persona, including Stanley Burnell in "Prelude" and "At the Bay", Reginald Peacock in "Mr. Reginald Peacock's Day", the Boss in "The Fly", are respectively discussed. In Chapter Three, the author analyzes three men who are conscious of their personas, such as Jonathan Trout in "At the Bay", William in "Marriage a la Mode", and old Mr. Neave in "An Ideal Family". And in Chapter Four a conclusion is made, that is, the male characters in Katherine Mansfield's short stories all put on the personas unconsciously or consciously, and they can be divided into two groups: some over-identify with their personas, and others, though aware of their personas, also wear them to conceal their true personality or to meet the expectation from other people.