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 vivid
interest 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 of
love, presenting both male and female characters experiencing the change between emotional
nearness and distance, between the hopes and anxieties of their dreams. Her short stories that are
set 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. In
a rather satirical style she displays an obviously feminist position as she criticizes male
dominance and the exploitation of women in marital relationships. After Mansfield married John
Middleton Murry in 1918, she writes stories which present her view of marriage - as it appears
in "Bliss" (1918), "The Stranger" (1920), Marriage à la Mode" (1921), "The Man Without a
Temperament" (1920) and "At the Bay" (1921). These narratives are mainly concerned with the
illustration of intimacy and alienation as well as with independence and constraint in marital
relations.
The following discourse is concerned with the male protagonists in Katherine
Mansfield's short stories "The Stranger", "At the Bay" and "A Birthday". It emphasizes intimacy
and alienation in marital partnerships as chief characteristics in these short stories. All three
stories, either set in Europe or New Zealand, present married couples at a certain stage of human
life in unlike contexts. As this discourse is going to reveal each of the three marriages is torn
between intimacy and alienation. It emphasizes on the male protagonists and their marital
relationship, but necessarily also includes a characterisation of their wives. The three chosen
short stories are perfect examples for such an analysis as their married couples have basic
elements in common, such as age, social status, family situation and the acceptance of traditional
gender-specific role models. Thus their personalities and emotional conflicts to which this
discourse directs its principal attention are not essentially distinguished by these aspects.
1 The following paragraph is based on: Dada-Büchel, Marianne. Katherine Mansfield's Dual Vision: Concepts of
Duality and Unity in Her Fictional Work. Andreas Fischer (Hrsg.). Thübingen: francke verlag, 1995. p. 127-128.