The Alienation In Katherine Mansfield’s Stories

Katherine Mansfield has been honored as an outstanding modernist writer of short stories in the twentieth century. She devotes her short life to create excellent short stories which received relatively little attention by English writers. As one of the innovators among English short story writers, Mansfield is quite different from the traditional ones in narrative. Because of her innovation, the English short stories presented an entirely new appearance and received great attention of the world.Critics both at home and abroad have analyzed her works from various perspectives, for instance, narrative techniques, writing style and thematic studies, namely, feminism, symbolism, pessimism, disillusion and so on. Mansfield’s life didn’t run smooth. During her lifetime of wandering, Mansfield suffered illness,the pain of losing her beloved brother in World War Ⅰ, the estrangement of family and the failure of marriage. All the experiences provide her a wealth of material for her literary creation. So the themes in her stories are not difficult to understand. She is good at presenting the complicated and delicate relationship between man and woman. She expresses nostalgic reminiscence, the desire for childish simplicity and the thought of isolation, disillusionment and death. There are also alienation in Mansfield’s stories. Nevertheless, few of the critics have focused on the theme of alienation. This thesis will analyze the theme of alienation reflected in Mansfield’s stories. The alienated relationship between human being and the society, between human beings and between man and his self will be analyzed.This thesis will mainly analyze the three aspects mentioned above. In chapter one, the alienation of the relationship between human being and the society is analyzed through The Prelude, At the Bay, A Cup of Tea etc. In the first part of chapter one, the presentation and the reason of the alienated relationship between men and the society is analyzed. Some of the men actively follow the social rules and feel satisfied; some of them are unconsciously controlled by the society and are unaware of their empty spirits; some of them are aware of the depression of the social rules but have no strength to struggle against it. In the second part, the alienated relationship between women and the society is analyzed. The women protagonists become the accessories of their husbands. They are happy on surface but actually have no place at all. They are lonely and living in fantasies which are often disillusioned. Even some of them are engulfed and corrupted by the society. So young women lose happiness and old women have miserable late life. In anther aspect, the children also can’t grow up happily. Their innocent worlds are assimilated by the adults. They gradually lose their natural quality.In chapter two, the two aspects of alienation of the relationship between human beings is analyzed through the story Bliss and etc. The alienated relationship of family numbers is embodied in that the husbands and wives are lack of understanding; the parents are indifferent to their children. The alienated relationship between normal folks is mainly represented in that people are gainful. They have lost the essential friendliness and kindness.In chapter three, the alienation of the relationship between man and his self is analyzed. The split of self and dehumanization are embodied in Mansfield’s stories. Man can not be a whole one. They are always depressed and constrained. So their true self are not presented but are hidden even lost. There are some dehumanized images in some of Mansfield’s works, such as the fly, moth, and spider etc. Those non-human images reflect the suppression and deprivation of the society which results in the inability and helplessness of human. That is the loss of the self.Thus the alienated relationships are the products of the capitalist society. Although the material is extremely rich in the industrial society, people’s spirits are quite empty. In Mansfield’s stories, the vivid protagonists represent people’s isolation, confusion, helplessness and disillusionment. Her stories embody the depression and pain brought by the cruel society and the alienation of the relationships between human being and the society, between human beings, between man and his self.