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Space And Anxiety

Posted on:2020-03-11Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:N Z YeFull Text:PDF
GTID:2415330578955592Subject:English Language and Literature
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Katherine Mansfield is one of the most influential writers in New Zealand.Her works mainly focus on the loneliness of the characters.The characters in her stories are always surrounded by anxiety.The anxiety of characters is related to their relations with other people in the social space of their society.Apart from that,Mansfield is skilled at describing psychological activity of human beings.The buildup of mental space is clear in her stories.She also puts emphasis on the nature and modern life including some architectures.All of these descriptions have an important impact on characters' mood.Therefore,spatial criticism is used to analyze people's anxiety from three different spaces in order to find out the relations between spaces and human beings' anxiety and prove that anxiety comes from their surroundings.This thesis mainly discusses eight short stories of Mansfield,including Marriage a la Mode,The Wind Blows,The Garden Party,Her First Ball,The Baron,Miss Brill,The Little Governess and Germans at Meat.From the perspective of space,spatial criticism was applied to analyze the anxiety of these characters in Mansfield's short stories and discuss the social factors in five parts.The first part is a brief introduction of Katherine Mansfield and her works,including the eight short stories selected in the thesis.It introduces the research on Mansfield in China and abroad and points out the purpose and the significance of the thesis as well as the originality.It introduces the research method applied in the thesis including the theoretical basis--spatial criticism and the topic of the thesis--anxiety.The author of this paper tries to dig out the relationship between space and anxiety.The second part demonstrates the anxiety of characters in Marriage a la Mode and The Wind Blows,The Garden Party from the physical space including landscape,the position of houses as well as the decoration of the house.It concludes that the anxiety is caused by physical space.The third part analyzes the various social relations in Her First Ball,The Baron and Miss Brill including biological and materialistic relations.The anxiety isattributed to the conflicts among people from different classes,different regions as well as countries.Apart from that,in this part,the writer analyzes the heterotopia behind the social space and the heterotopia of deviation in The Little Governess.The author of the thesis also found out that anxiety of people does not only come from the social relations in the surface,when people find the existence of heterotopia and become skeptical to the social order,they are likely to be lost in anxiety.The fourth part,according to the illustration about the demand for space by Bryan Lawson,illustrates that the imbalance on demands for space leads to anxiety in Her First Ball,The Little Governess and Germans at Meat.The fifth part is conclusion.The conclusion is that there is a close relationship between people and the area they are.When conflicts take place in the space,it is undoubtedly that there would be anxiety.Therefore,in order to build a harmonious society,it is necessary to enhance communications among individuals to improve their mutual understanding.In other words,there should be a balance among each element in the space which can guarantee that the space is able to function well,thereby reducing conflicts and anxiety.
Keywords/Search Tags:Katherine Mansfield, Spatial Criticism, Anxiety, Physical Space, social space, mental space
PDF Full Text Request
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