Discuss the idea of innocence and experience in Mansfield’s work.

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Discuss the idea of innocence and experience in Mansfield’s work.

The ideas of innocence and experience are frequent themes that come up

in Mansfield’s stories. These ideas often come across in themes such

as loss of sexual innocence – ‘The Little Governess’; loss of

innocence through awareness of mortality and death – ‘The Garden

Party’, ‘Her First Ball’. Themes of aging and gaining of experience

as time passes are also suggested. The woman in ‘The Woman at the

Store’, we can that she has already lost her innocence, whereas in the

other stories we see the point where characters have lost their

innocence.

‘The Little Governess’ is about a young, inexperienced and vulnerable

woman who gets sexually exploited in a “world full of old men with

twitching knees”. Connotations of the title already suggest that she

is a naïve girl with no experience. She is described as the “little”

governess – suggesting she is a naïve, innocent, vulnerable girl who

is diminutive with no experience. Also, people that became

governesses in those times were usually bright but inexperienced

middle class women. The typical language she uses sets up her

innocence and naivety. Use of German and French dialect expressions

highlights the novelty of European travel for the governess and her

innocence and naivety .She is described as “quite white, with big

round eyes”, “long lashes”, “soft beauty”, these descriptions again

emphasize how childish and innocent she is.

Use of foreshadowing is used to develop themes and is quite obvious

regarding loss of sexual innocence. There is foreshadowing at the

start “I always tell my girls that it’s better to mistrust people at

first rather than trust them”, this sets up the atmosphere and giv...

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...body suggests she may be envious of him, as he

no longer has to worry about anything “What did garden parties…matter

to him? He was far from all those things”. It may also suggest her

childish inability to accept the finality of death and wants to view

it as sleep “sleeping so soundly”. At this point, Laura has a partial

realisation of death’s seriousness. She sees the reality of death,

but is unsure of what to do with her new knowledge.

The ideas of innocence and experience are reoccurring themes

throughout Mansfield’s stories.

We come to realize that human emotion and experience is universal,

regardless of class distinction. We cannot escape death due to our

mortality, thus we must all accept it. Everyone grows to become more

experienced over time even though Mansfield sees the loss of innocence

and the gain of new experience as a negative process.

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