English 210
Mansfield’s Short Stories
Modernism & short story:
1. Disruptions in narrative flow:
- Linear chronologies broken down
- Sense of resolution is left out or deferred to reader’s imagination
- Perspectival changes introduced abruptly
2. Fragmentation:
- Breakdown of expectation of unity/wholeness of narrative flow & characters
3. Ambiguity & complexity:
- Fragmentation & disruption resist simple definition for both formal & thematic concerns
4. Free indirect discourse:
- Instances when character’s thoughts & attitudes infiltrate narration (blurring boundaries
between description & experience)
5. Description of perception & lived perspectives of individuals
- Experiences of everyday life incorporated into literary text
6. Relationships & interactions between people:
- Influence which these lived perspectives impact on how people engage with one another
1. Prelude:
- Title= emphasis notion of something that comes before something else, creates sense of cause
& consequence, story depicts 3 generations of women in 1 family- how do older generations
anticipate possible consequences for younger generations & how do youngest mimic/
foreshadow older
- Family sense of stress about move: tone infiltrates narrative voice
- Opening depicts disrupted household: moving to new home/ beginning (before & after element)
- Lottie & Kezia are seen as less important than baggage & are left out of moving process
- Opening scene introduces sense of fragmentation: disruptive narrative structure
- Family’s change in home address is fragmentation for Kezia
- Kezia notices familiar & alien in house
- Kezia’s finding of pill box: crossing of boundary between lives before & after move, she
contemplates new use for pill box
- Empty house becomes uncertain space, this sense of uncertainty causes sound effects in
house to be heightened
- Lived experiences of Kezia are observed: her fear of unknown, how she is playful in her
interactions with house (moments of marveling pill box & her imprints in glass)
- Shows ways that playfulness can defamiliarize situations & can make something alien more
understandable
- Sense of unity between Stanley & Beryl’s when playing cribbage
1
Mansfield’s Short Stories
Modernism & short story:
1. Disruptions in narrative flow:
- Linear chronologies broken down
- Sense of resolution is left out or deferred to reader’s imagination
- Perspectival changes introduced abruptly
2. Fragmentation:
- Breakdown of expectation of unity/wholeness of narrative flow & characters
3. Ambiguity & complexity:
- Fragmentation & disruption resist simple definition for both formal & thematic concerns
4. Free indirect discourse:
- Instances when character’s thoughts & attitudes infiltrate narration (blurring boundaries
between description & experience)
5. Description of perception & lived perspectives of individuals
- Experiences of everyday life incorporated into literary text
6. Relationships & interactions between people:
- Influence which these lived perspectives impact on how people engage with one another
1. Prelude:
- Title= emphasis notion of something that comes before something else, creates sense of cause
& consequence, story depicts 3 generations of women in 1 family- how do older generations
anticipate possible consequences for younger generations & how do youngest mimic/
foreshadow older
- Family sense of stress about move: tone infiltrates narrative voice
- Opening depicts disrupted household: moving to new home/ beginning (before & after element)
- Lottie & Kezia are seen as less important than baggage & are left out of moving process
- Opening scene introduces sense of fragmentation: disruptive narrative structure
- Family’s change in home address is fragmentation for Kezia
- Kezia notices familiar & alien in house
- Kezia’s finding of pill box: crossing of boundary between lives before & after move, she
contemplates new use for pill box
- Empty house becomes uncertain space, this sense of uncertainty causes sound effects in
house to be heightened
- Lived experiences of Kezia are observed: her fear of unknown, how she is playful in her
interactions with house (moments of marveling pill box & her imprints in glass)
- Shows ways that playfulness can defamiliarize situations & can make something alien more
understandable
- Sense of unity between Stanley & Beryl’s when playing cribbage
1
