Life and Works of

Katherine
Mansfield
The author of The Garden
party and other Stories
She was born in New Zealand (1888-
1923) in a wealthy family. Her father,
Harold Beauchamp was a self
promoted financier who was elected as
the governor of the bank of New
Zealand. Her mother was an upper-
class woman who was born and
brought up with strict Victorians
values. She obviously wanted to
enforce those values on her children.

Conflict of Values: within and

out family.
Mansfield started writing at an early age and she
turned out to be a good writer. Her journals and
reflective writings were published in High School
Reporter and Wellington High School Magazine.
This is the same school she went to. She was also
the editor for the little mag. in her school.

She also had interest in playing instruments. She

was a good cellist.

This led to her first affair with a musician cum and

her trainer Arnold Trowell. Mansfield was probably
just a teenager then. As a result, it did not last very
long.

Keeping with the tradition of the wealthy families

Mansfield was sent to London for her graduation in
1903 in Queens College along with her sisters.
Now ,this experiences turned out to be different for
the Mansfield sisters.
London back in 1903 was the center for art
and culture for the European progressive
lifestyle and a center for the Modernists
artists. In many ways, it was remarkably
different and tolerant towards changes and
artistic freedom than many other cities and of
course than New Zealand. Katherine felt
more at home here. She resumed playing
cello and writing but decided to take cello
playing as her profession.

London gave her the freedom and opportunity

she needed to excel as an artist and a human.

Besides the school curriculum, Katherine

kept writing and playing cello and later
became the editor for the college magazine.
Mansfield was courageous, self willed, and ahead of her
time. The artistic exposure and nurturing environment of
London developed Mansfield into a free-spirited young
woman who wanted to live on her own and not yield to the
expectations of society. And by expectations we refer to
the traditional idea of getting married and having children
and staying within the boundary of social class. Mansfield
on the other hand, wanted to earn and pay for herself and
she was not yet ready to be married. Most importantly, she
wanted to be an artist which was pretty much an outrageous
thought for a girl coming from a small town.

She invented her own style with knee length, comfortable

skirts and a bob hair cut. This was later largely known as
the Flappers.

She struggled to be self dependant and wanted to follow

her dreams instead of following a life dictated by her
family.

She did not care about the strict code decreed for women
and was often misunderstood by her peers and mostly by
her family.

Why do we put her under the

label ‘Modern’?
Flappers
She met Garnet Trowell, Arnold’s younger brother
and resumed the unresolved attachment with the
elder brother. However, this was not approved by
Trowell family.

Became pregnant and later married George Bowden,

a music teacher at a school. But they were separated
immediately.

She was taken to Germany by her mother to put her

out of the misery. This was a period of poverty and
hardship for her. By this time, she was already an
outsider and cause of shame for her family. She was
eventually cut off from the family will too. She did
not have any friends or anyone to support her.

Wrote In a German Pension on the account of her

troubles.
Personal Life: Because of her
alterative lifestyle, her personal and
emotional life saw many ups and
downs
 Back to New Zealand in 1906. But she could not
find anything to attach to.

 Return to London in 1908 and never to return.

 However, this turned out to be a productive year

for her literary career. She befriended Virginia
Woolf, D H Lawrence and many other emerging
modernist, experiential writers. She joined the
Bloomsbury circle.

 This was a famous literary circle hosted by

Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard
Woolf. They used to invite all the struggling
writers who wanted to come out from Victorian
writing style and invent something new.
Prominent writers like D H Lawrence, E M
Forster, painter Vanessa Bell and many more.
Started writing for an Avant Garde
magazine The New Age and later for
Rhythm.

Met her long-term husband John

Middleton Murry who was also the editor
of an aspiring Avant Garde magazine
Rhythm. This magazine sought to publish
the works of young artists , who wanted
write something new and could not find
publishers. The first story that she sent to
Rhythm was a murder mystery. It showed
the dark and degenerate side of human
mind which was pretty new.

The avant-garde (from French, "advance

guard" or "vanguard", literally "fore-
guard") are people or works that are
experimental or innovative, particularly with
respect to art, culture, and politics.
 Growing detachment from her family.
 Her relationship with Murry saw many turns
but they remained lifelong friends.
 However, the following year came with an
event that changed her life forever. The world
already started to experience the havoc of
World War I. The death news of her much
beloved and younger brother Leslie reached
her family. It left a permanent mark on
Mansfield.
 Blown to bits!" That is how Katherine
Mansfield, still in shock just a few days after
learning of her brother's death in the war,
described him to a friend. Twenty-one-year-
old Leslie "Chummie" Beauchamp had been
stationed in France for less than a month when
on 7 October 1915, as he was giving a hand
grenade demonstration, a defective grenade
blew up in his hand with a force so strong it
killed both himself and his sergeant .

Later life
Leslie’sdeath worked as a uniting force
for Mansfield. For all these years, we did
not see her missing New Zealand or her
family. But now, she is continuously
drawn closer to her memories of her
childhood. The Garden Party was a
reaction to both Leslie’s death and
World War I (1914-1918).

She began to take refuge in nostalgic

reminiscences of their childhood in New
Zealand.

By the remembered stream my brother stands

Waiting for me with berries in his hands...
"These are my body. Sister, take and eat.
Mansfield was diagnosed with tuberculosis
and spent her last years seeking
increasingly unorthodox cures for her
tuberculosis.
Died out of Tuberculosis in Paris. January
9, 1923, Fontainebleau, France.
Much of her best works were published
after her death by her husband Tom Murry.
The Dove's Nest, a collection of her
fabulous stories which she wrote came out
in 1923.

Garden party and other stories include issues

of growing up, adolescence, innocence,
experience, individuality, values, society,
family, death, class, gender. But most
importantly it talks of the terror of growing up,
experiencing new things and having an
opinion on them.
Mostly wrote short fictions.

Female characters triumph in her

stories and they achieve heroic stature
at the cost of their awakening. Laura,
Miss Brill.

Biographical elements.

Growing up, freedom, breaking the code,

loneliness and experiencing Epiphany.

Narrative Technique: Written with an

intimate, Personal tone and in
stream of consciousness.

Literary Traditions
A Cup of Tea
Katherine Mansfield
The story is set in England
Beginning of the 20th century
People from different social
classes did not socialize with
one another.
It was considered improper for
upper class women to work
outside of the home.

Ideal---Standards

A Cup of Tea
Mansfield short story focuses
more on the emotions and
psychological make-up of her
characters.
◦ Emotional states, subtle
shifts of mood, and
epiphanies
Flatter
Snob
Patronize
Vanity

A Cup of Tea
 “In Mansfield’s stories, characters
are often splits or doubles of a
single personality; mirror images
abound, reflecting a multiplicity of
queens, dream, and pervasive
fears.” Her writing, “… attempts to
reveal her attempts to liberate
herself from these conflicts and
especially from the prevailing role
and image of woman.”
◦ Marie Jean Lederman, Twentieth
Century Literary Criticism Vol. 2

A Cup of Tea
“Rosemary Fell, the
smart, affluent, but
insincere young woman
of A Cup of Tea damns
herself… through avidity
for an exciting
experience which feeds
on another’s misery.”
◦ Saralyn R. Daly,
Katherine Mansfield (79)

A Cup of Tea
“Rosemary is artificial, idle,
insensitive. The contrast
between the five pounds she
reduces to three as a gift to the
penniless girl and the useless but
pretty twenty-eight guinea box
she asks of her husband reveals
her selfish materialism. But the
final detail of her exposure
dwells on her insecure vanity,
the real reason for dismissing
the young woman whom her
husband called ‘astonishingly
pretty…absolutely lovely.’”
◦ 80

A Cup of Tea
Thank You!