The Narrative Art Of Katherine Mansfield's Short Stories

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923 )was born in New Zealand, but she got famein British literature firstly. She devoted all her life into short stories' creation andinnovation, which gave a road to the new development of short stories that havebeen overlooked for a long time. She is one of the followers and leaders ofthe trend of the Western Modernist Literature, which can be seen in her attemptand reform towards all kinds of modernist narrative strategies in her work.In the conventional concept, the core element in a novel is "story". Writersmake every effort to pursuit the integrity, coherence and intricacy of the plot, andthe dramatic conflicts. However, Mansfield 's short stories always use a narrationstyle of anti-climax. The plotless stories can give readers an enjoyment of thebeauty of both poetry and prose. It shows in the narrative structure. Firstly, sheused some creative strategies in the design of beginning, middle and the ending inher fictions. The novel usually begins in the middle of a story, and it ends with nospecific ending. Besides, she liked to depict several fragments of daily life andcombine them in one through the connection between characters' emotion.Secondly, Mansfield used a technique of chaotic arrangement of time and space tomix memory, dream and reality instead of using single and linear narration. Byusing the character's psychological change as a clue to connect the organic wholeof her story, she showed not only multi-dimensional time structure and spacelocation, but also complex and flowing conscious.Moreover, Mansfield also used internal monologue, free indirect discourse,multiple perspective transmission and many other modernist narrative techniqueswidely in her work. In this way, she can switch between different focus anddiscourse modes to let the narrator keep a distance with the text. As aconsequence, the narrator's intervention is reduced and readers can get involvedinto the story to make objective and rational judgment. What's more, it can help reveal different characters' inner world in multiple sides and layers and help implythe theme.Mansfield pursued form and techniques all the time for serving theexpression of context and theme. In order to shape characters more accurately andhelp reveal those inharmonious interpersonal relationship between familymembers and others,she did much to design characters' discourse. She madedifferent characters to express themselves in their own way and used the amountof conversation as a measure to affinity. Besides, she repeated themes such as"war and death","identity cognition anxiety" and "the contradiction of values"which were related to her personal experience. By using the eye of children,Mansfield intended to show the rules in adults' world. In this sense, the themes ofher stories are profound. Furthermore, she frequently repeat using many symbolsand sentences to show multiple meanings.In conclusion, in the early 20th century, Mansfield's position as a pioneer inthe modern English short fiction field can be confirmed just by measuring thenarrative techniques she used in her work. Although the importance of her shortstories have been overlooked for a long time because of her colonist identity andearly death, fortunately the research towards her work boom in new era.