A Study Of Katherine Mansfield's Short-Story Writing In The Perspective Of Postmodern Feminism

Katherine Mansfield,as a master of modernist short stories,built a reputation for her contributions to the short story genre with her unique writing style.In stories,Mansfield paid attention to women's social status and tried to figure out a literary way for women's emancipation,which have been continuously drawing feminist critics to her writings.Through close reading,it was found that Mansfield's views on gender identity demonstrated in her works somehow outstripped modernism.Based upon these,this thesis focuses on gender identity,and tries to investigate Mansfield's postmodern feminist ideology in her short stories,since postmodernism pays more attention to individual's subjectivity in which gender identity is also included.By means of reinterpreting Mansfield's main works,such as "Prelude","Bliss",etc.,this thesis focuses on the instability and individual difference of gender identity.On one hand,the instability of characters' gender identity is analyzed from women characters' hesitation over the patriarchal gender-system and the phenomenon of the conversion of gender images;on the other hand,gender difference and characters' marginality are explored from women characters' conflicts and the bisexual attractions.Therefore,in Mansfield's view,gender identity is by no means in a traditional either-or mode.Correspondingly,postmodern feminism opposes the essentialism who concluded that one's gender was congenital and unchangeable,and should be either male or female.Mansfield's feminist views also share something in common with the postmodern feminist psychology who negates all grand-narrations and calls for attention to a multi-value methodology and to marginality.Therefore,this thesis argues the possibility that Mansfield's feminist view transcended the scope of modernist discourse and reached the postmodern sphere,and points out the diversity and uniqueness of individual gender identity,thereby appealing attention to individual differences in gender identity and the significant role of social construction in cultivating such differences.