Male protagonists and their marital situation in Katherine Mansfield's short stories 'The Stranger', 'At The Bay' and 'A Birthday'

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7 (A-), University of Trier (Department for English Literature), course: Katherine Mansfield, language: English, abstract: [...] Besides, they are in a conflict between a commitment to love and their vividinterest in art. In other stories, such as The Singing Lesson (1920/22), Poison (1920/24) and Mr. and Mrs. Dove (1921/1922) Katherine Mansfield focuses on a more romantic notion oflove, presenting both male and female characters experiencing the change between emotionalnearness and distance, between the hopes and anxieties of their dreams. Her short stories that areset in Bavaria, such as A Birthday (1911), Frau Brechenmacher Attends a Wedding (1910)and The Child-Who-Was-Tired (1910), deal with marital love and lack this romantic mood. Ina rather satirical style she displays an obviously feminist position as she criticizes maledominance and the exploitation of women in marital relationships. After Mansfield married JohnMiddleton Murry in 1918, she writes stories which present her view of marriage as it appearsin Bliss (1918), The Stranger (1920), Marriage a la Mode (1921), The Man Without aTemperament (1920) and At the Bay (1921). These narratives are mainly concerned with theillustration of intimacy and alienation as well as with independence and constraint in maritalrelations. The following discourse is concerned with the male protagonists in KatherineMansfield s short stories The Stranger , At the Bay and A Birthday . It emphasizes intimacyand alienation in marital partnerships as chief characteristics in these short stories. All threestories, either set in Europe or New Zealand, present married couples at a certain stage of humanlife in unlike contexts. As this discourse is going to reveal each of the three marriages is tornbetween intimacy and alienation. It emphasizes on the male protagonists and their maritalrelationship, but necessarily also includes a characterisation of their wives. The three chosenshort stories are perfect examples for such an analysis as their married couples have basicelements in common, such as age, social status, family situation and the acceptance of traditionalgender-specific role models. Thus their personalities and emotional conflicts to which thisdiscourse directs its principal attention are not essentially distinguished by these aspects. 1 The following paragraph is based on: Dada-Buchel, Marianne. Katherine Mansfield s Dual Vision: Concepts ofDuality and Unity in Her Fictional Work. Andreas Fischer (Hrsg.). Thubingen: francke verlag, 1995. p. 127-128.