The Theme Of Marriage In Katherine Mansfield's 'Bliss'

Katherine Mansfield is a writer that has had a lot experience with love, respect, and other things. She shows it in her short stories and poems. One short story in particular is “Bliss”, this story takes place in the life and times of Bertha Young, and wife that is struggling with her feelings. Bertha is in the stage of her life where she is trying to figure out who she loves. Bertha along with Harry, her husband, and Pearl Fulton all go through different situations, and the theme of marriage is developed through the use of symbols, love triangles, and displacement.

“Bliss” written by Katherine Mansfield is a story unlike many others. On every page she brings in a different meaning and symbol to show her theme of marriage. One of the first

Mansfield depicts a love triangle that is hidden to the readers until the end of the story. Walter E. Anderson wrote a nine page literary analysis on the love triangle between Miss Fulton and Bertha and then on Harry and Miss Fulton. Anderson explains the relationship between Bertha, the main character, and Miss Fulton as being one of the homosexual nature (401). Anderson marks that “[p]revious critics generally seem to agree that `Bliss` embodies a provocative study in the mood and feeling within a conventional love-triangle plot” (397). In the Anderson’s writings readers find not only that Bertha is growing a liking to Miss Fulton but that Miss Fulton is aware and flirtatiously leading Bertha on. Mansfield depicts that Bertha and Miss Fulton were aware when she writes, “Miss Fulton held her hand a moment longer. “`Your lovely pear tree! ` she murmured” (98). This exchange takes place at the end of the story, but it still shows that there is an unspoken and spoken kindling between Bertha and Miss Fulton. The ending gives the reader that last hint of the love-triangle that Mansfield is developing throughout the short story. The interpretation that readers get at the end is that Bertha does not come out to her husband that she has homosexual feelings towards Miss Fulton, but readers get the sense that the story cannot be done because readers do not know how Harry

The displacement throughout “Bliss” is worded in a way that most readers will miss over it. Thomas Dilworth writes a literary essay on the garden and the Darwinism that is present in the characters and scenes throughout Mansfield’s “Bliss”. Dilworth tells on how Bertha looks through the windows and sees the garden and the pear tree in the middle with the cat sliding on its belly is a representation of the Garden of Eden, from the Judeo-Christian religion (149). In “Bliss” Bertha sees two animals a grey cat and a black cat Dilworth explains that, “[t]he cat is associated with Miss Fulton at the end of the story, when she follows Warren out `like the black cat following the grey cat `. She may be the serpent in this paradisal garden, bringing about Bertha’s fall from bliss” (149). Mansfield illustrates the Garden differently than some readers see it. In “Bliss” Mansfield writes, “[t]he windows of the drawing-room opened on to a balcony overlooking the garden. At the far end, against the wall, there [is] a tall, slender pear tree in fullest, richest bloom; it stood perfect, as though becalmed against the jade-green sky” (89). This scene is when Bertha comes home and she is so excited about everything; that when she sees the garden that has been there since she has been in the house she feels an overwhelming feeling of ecstasy. During this part