The Portraits Of The Female Characters-On Katherine Mansfield's Concept Of The Female

As a pioneer in the era of modern short story, Katherine Mansfield is well-known for her uniqueness on short story writing techniques and philosophy. By employing close-reading with the help of the idea of the Other, this thesis aims to elaborate on several representative female characters and concludes Mansfield's concept of the female from the perspectives of social culture and psychology.The thesis begins with a survey of Katherine Mansfield's critical scholarship,the scope and objective of the present study. In the body section, on the basis of the idea of the Other, the author classifies the female characters into two categories in accordance with their social status namely:the Marginalized and the Centered.The former is a group of young women coming from the lower class.In the end, they fall victim to poverty, lower social status and their gender as women. The latter is a group of upper-class young ladies.Their sufficient possession fails to bring them real happiness.The so-called centered is another group of victims of the male-dominated society with the token of the Other.On the basis of the previous analysis, in the following, the author transfers the focus from the exterior life into the interior life of those female characters.Through analyzing the female characters'reaction and acceptance toward the sense of disillusionment, the author summarizes the female is a unique social group whose sense of disillusionment differentiates them from the male.When they are first exposed to the reality, disillusionment plays the role as growth catalyst.Stepping into the society, the female suffer from the endless feeling of disillusionment. Eventually it develops into the force of motivating the female to seek for their real and conscious self.In the final stage of her creation, Mansfield produces a number of stories centering on girl characters upon whom she places her hope of becoming a women living in an ideal lifestyle.The road of seeking for the real and conscious self is fraught with uncertainties;however, they have no choice but to move forward.Through the above analysis and summarization, it is concluded that open-ending and being free of plots feature the works of Katherine Mansfield and it is these writing techniques that enable her to externalize the interior life of her characters.Mansfield's concept of the female is like a kaleidoscope.Those female characters are persistently seeking for the balance between freedom and stability from generation to generation. The sense of disillusionment recurring during the balance-discovery process leads to women's self-awareness.