The Stories of Katherine Mansfield

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Recommended: Use of symbolism by katherine mansfield the garden party

“Dialogue in fiction is what characters do to one another,” the novelist Elizabeth Bowen argued. What is read and discussed is what the characters create, what they do, how they react, etc. Katherine Mansfield recapitulates exactly that through her creative and illustrating short stories. Mansfield takes you on a ride throughout her stories through the use of many different literary techniques displaying feelings and emotions. Katherine Mansfield wrote “A Dill Pickle,” a short story based on two former lovers. Through the use of symbols and themes, the short story takes us through the world of these two characters, who show changes they have gone through that essentially reopened the wounds of their past relationship.

"She dressed like a tart and behaved like a bitch. She seems to be an unpleasant and utterly unscrupulous character. She's gone every sort of hog since she was seventeen ... and she stinks like a civet cat that has taken to streetwalking." (Hansen 1) That is very harsh thing to say which came from the mouth of Virginia Woolf, another writer during the time period. Now although she nor a lot of people were very fond of Katherine Mansfield, people did admit to liking this ambitious young writer. By the time Mansfield died, she wrote 72 stories, mastered playing the cello, did a good amount of traveling and became a magazine editor as well as accomplished many other things in a matter of 35 years. Katherine was a passionate woman and she lived outside the norm of most young women of her time. Furthermore, had a free spirit and risked everything as well as always having a form of glitz in her life. She displayed herself as flashy and would change her personality so easily, as well as her writing. It was dif...

... middle of paper ...

...http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/

detail?hid=113&sid=2bf664bb-41b8-4e82-beb8-dad970dcdbbe%40sessionmgr111&vid=3&bda

ta=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=afh&AN=2675252>.

Hanson, Clare. "Prelude Katherine Mansfield and Symbolism: the 'artist's

method'' in ." The Journal of Commonwealth Literature (1981): n. pag.

SAGE Journals Online. Web. 7 Mar. 2011.

25.full.pdf+html>.

L'Heureux, John. "Talk that Walks: How Hemingway's Dialogue Powers A Story."

Wall Street Journal: n. pag. Print. Dialogue in Fiction.

Mansfield, Katherine. From Bliss and Other Stories. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

1920. 228-238. Print.

Mansfield, Katherine. Preface. The Garden Party And Other Stories. By Mansfield.

London: London Constable and Bombay Company Sydney Limited, 1922. N. pag.

Print.

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