Katherine Beauchamp Mansfield

(1888-1923)
A rebel against conventions; flirtatious with so many affairs, marriages,
& miscarriages; one of the pioneers of Modernism; introduced
innovations in modern storytelling: impressions, moods, & transient
sensations (stream of consciousness); Bloomsbury Group: feminism,
pacifism, & sexuality; the shades of Darwinism (complexities of human
psyche), Freudianism (self-estrangement occasioned by the split
between the unconscious & conscious), Marxism (alienated labour under
capitalism; from religion to secularism); the merging of Freudianism &
Marxism: Material & Mentality determining class position: subversion
of capitalism & male power: capitalist exploitation is but patriarchal
exploitation; Her Art: delicate elusive surface; homely & domestic
subjects for political commentary; as a pacifist she advocated gradual
social change & not violent revolutions; an exponent of emerging
feminism (misogyny, women’s oppression, political rights &
representation [female suffrage]; men, women, society: covertly
significant;
 Bliss
Deprivation of sentimentality from bourgeois family concept; the nurse
& the nursery: the instrument of labour & the means of sustenance; the
nurse's relationship to the housewife is that of "modern enslavement by
capital“ since she is "selling" herself "as a commodity like any other
article of commerce"; her relation to the child is devoid of any sentiment
since, her job, is only of a mechanical nature; both the women (N & B)
as women under an oppressive patriarchal organization; the industrial
mode of production & familial mode of production: capitalist
exploitation & patriarchal exploitation; both as commodities &exposed
to the fluctuations of market economy; a cynical (negative, pessimistic)
exposition (description) of woman as a marketable commodity; but this
kind of oppression is disguised as the dominant social ideology of
intimate relation is nothing other than love; Bertha’s story & her final
discovery not sentimental renderings but a feminist critique of the
negative knowledge occasioned by the social & sexual structures that
repress & deflect the feelings of bliss; because women have accepted
secondary roles in public and private life, they are accustomed to think
of themselves as powerless.
Their status is reflected by their women's speech. When they use
women's speech, they reinforce all over again the conviction that they
are powerless; that Bertha will not be able to communicate her vision,
unless a sympathetic woman friend will share it; The woman who felt
"bliss" earlier but hysterical at her inability to communicate; Pearl
Fulton sympathetic, waiting for a "sign“ to share her emotion; "Your
lovely pear tree“ a symbol of the desirability of human intimacy and the
betrayal of it. flame of a candle, to stretch up, to point, to quiver in the
bright air, to grow taller and taller as they gazed ... almost to the rim of
the moon; holistic (unifying); this could be the discovery of a potential
life all women possess. What the vision suggests is that there are
possibilities of relationships which are gracious and free. Women in the
real world of the story are threatened with actual and imagined acts of
violence; talk at the party is a continuous barrage of horror stories;
telling us the paranoia of our modern times; Bertha is a female
stereotype: timid, sentimental, childish, frigid (sexually unresponsive)
, naive, self-deluding; she is hysterical when looked into her obsessions;
fruit on the dining table; to the nursery in search of another outlet for her
emotions. how much of a stranger she is in her daughter's world.to
question the nurse's authority, the mother is converted into a mere
observer; feels excluded or alienated: "Why have a baby if it has to be
kept-not in a case like a rare, rare fiddle-but in another woman's arms";
the story ends into an unpleasant little exposé (a scandal, a crime)  of a
social group and of a child-woman when Henry is caught in an amorous
embrace of Fulton Pearl.