Expressions Of Womanly Desire In Katherine Mansfield’s Short Stories

Katherine Mansfield is one of the few female writers whose reputation is mostlybased on short stories. In the literary world, she is known both for her innovativewriting techniques and detailed description of human life. As a female writer, she paysattention to women’s living conditions by penetrating into their inner world, andmaking a discovery about their repressed desire. In her short stories, womencharacters confront the problem of multiple selves, stuck in the collision between thetrue self and the false self to find their identities.This thesis intends to analyze Mansfield’s application of modernist techniques toexpress women characters’ desire by adopting Lacan’s theory of desire. Firstly,Mansfield connects women characters’ inner feelings with various symbols, fromnatural objects to materials, making the abstract into concrete. Secondly, her adoptionof conscious description is very prominent in presenting the character’s inner desire.Through this, the character’s interior world is directly presented to the reader. Thirdly,abandoning the traditional narrative methods, Mansfield’s innovation in narrativetechniques helps interpret the subtle and unspeakable feelings hidden under women’severyday behavior and trivial events. This is also in accordance with her desire ofdisplaying the true life rather than an omniscient-narrated story. Above all,Mansfield’s writing techniques play important roles in shaping modernist works.