katherine mansfield short biography

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October 14, 1888 Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp is born to Annie Dyer and Harold Beauchamp, residing at 11 Tinakori Rd, Wellington, New Zealand, “a little land with no history.” She will be one of six children.

1895 Begins school at Karori village school.

1898 Attends Wellington Girls’ High School. Publishes first work in High School Reporter.

1899 Transfers to Miss Swainson’s school where she meets Maori princess Maata Mahupuku, later remembered in novel fragment, “Maata.” KM described by teacher as “surly” and “imaginative to the point of untruth.”

1902 Frequents the musical Trowell family. Falls in love with Tom (Arnold) Trowell, cellist, whom she calls “Caesar.” Dreams of pursuing a musical career.

January 29, 1903 The Beauchamps sail to England on the S.S Niwaru. The trip lasts forty-two days.

1903 – June 1906 Enrolls with sisters Vera and Chaddie at Queen’s College, Harley Street to be “finished.” Develops friendship with Ida Constance Baker. Adopts the name “Katherine Mansfield,” while Ida becomes “Lesley Moore”. Meets first literary mentor, Walter Rippmann, German teacher. Discovers the work of Oscar Wilde. Publishes five stories in school magazine and becomes its editor. Completes studies at Queen’s College in June. Works on novel fragment “Juliet”. KM’s period at Queen’s College is recorded in Ida Baker’s memoirs, The Memories of LM.

December 1906 – June 1908 Returns with sisters to New Zealand but cannot adjust. Friendship with Edie Bendall recorded in diary. Publishes three stories “Vignettes,” “Silhouettes,” and ” In a Café” in Australian newspaper, Native Companion. Takes a camping trip to visit the hinterland of New Zealand at the insistence of her father. Writes “The Education of Audrey,” heavily influenced by Oscar Wilde.

July 6, 1908 Leaves New Zealand for England aboard the Papanui never to return.

Summer 1908 Resides at student hostel, Beauchamp Lodge, near the canal at Paddington. Receives from family a weekly allowance of forty shillings: thirty for the rent and ten for the rest.

Autumn – Winter 1908 Reconnects with the Trowell family now in London. Transfers her feelings to Tom’s twin brother, Garnet, a violinist. Becomes pregnant by Garnet.

January 1909 Publishes “The Education of Audrey” in the Evening Post. Begins to find a mature voice with her story “The Tiredness of Rosabel”.

March 2, 1909 Marries George Bowden, singing and elocution teacher, ten years her senior, at the Paddington Registry Office. Wears black to her wedding with Ida as only witness. Leaves Bowden immediately afterwards. Bowden later caricatured in “Mr. Reginald Peacock’s Day”, Nine years pass before their divorce.

May 1909 Disapproving of KM’s attachment to Ida, Annie Beauchamp takes her daughter to Bad Worishofen, Bavaria and leaves her there, probably unaware that she is pregnant. Experiences here provide material for her first collection In a German Pension.

Late June 1909(?) Has a miscarriage

Summer 1909 Romantic involvement with Floryan Sobieniowski, Polish critic and translator through whom she discovers Chekhov and new Russian literature. Writes “The Child Who Was Tired” borrowing a plot from Chekhov. May have contracted gonorrhea from Floryan with whom she plans to run away to Paris.

January 1910 Returns to London, residing at the Strand Palace Hotel. Floryan eagerly awaits her in Paris, but she ends their affair.

Late Winter 1910 Lives briefly with George Bowden. Meets Alfred Richard Orage, editor of The New Age, future pupil of G.I. Gurdjieff . Publishes “The Child Who Was Tired” in The New Age. Will later credit Orage as being the person who “taught her how to write.”

March 1910 After an attack of peritonitis, undergoes operation to remove infected Fallopian tube. Ida nurses her back to health at Rottingdean.

Summer 1910 Befriended by Orage and his mistress, South African writer, Beatrice Hastings, caustic critic for the New Age, future lover and model of Amedeo Modigliani. House-sits a flat in Cheyne Walk. Becomes friends with William Orton with whom she keeps a journal. Orton will depict her in his autobiographical novel, The Last Romantic, which includes passages apparently written by KM.

November 1910 Post-Impressionist Exhibition opens in London, with works by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse. KM will be among the many visitors.

January 1911 Moves to 69 Clovelly Mansions in Gray’s Inn Road.

Spring 1911 May have been pregnant again. Ida Baker recounts the episode in The Memories of LM

June 22, 1911 Coronation of George V attended by the Beauchamp family with whom she is reunited. Re-establishes ties with younger brother Leslie, “Chummie”.

December 1911 Publication of In a German Pension. Submits “The Woman at the Store,” New Zealand murder story to Rhythm, avant-garde magazine edited by John Middleton Murry. Meets Murry at dinner party organized by W.L. George.

April 1912 Murry moves in as KM’s lodger at 69 Clovelly Mansions, occupying “the Buddha room” at 7s.6d a month. This period is vividly described in Murry’s autobiography, Between Two Worlds.

Spring 1912 Becomes assistant editor of Rhythm. Attacked by Hastings and Orage in The New Age.

August 1912 Forced with Murry to leave Clovelly Mansions because they are not married

September 1912 Moves with Murry to Runcton Cottage near Chichester. Quarrel with Henri Gaudier and Sophie Brzeska. Receives uninvited guest, Floryan Sobieniowski.

October 1912 The publisher of Rhythm goes bankrupt. KM pledges annual income from her father to pay back a printer’s debt for four years.

Moves with Murry back to London to dreary digs in Chancery Lane, furnished with a camp bed, two chairs, and a packing case. They struggle to keep the magazine afloat. Contributors include Hugh Walpole and DH Lawrence.

Christmas 1912 Spends Christmas in Paris with Murry.

March 1913 In need of fresh air, KM rents a house in the country in Buckinghamshire where Murry is to join her on weekends. They find the separation stressful

May 1913 Rhythm becomes the short-lived Blue Review and publishes a story by DH Lawrence, “The Soiled Rose”.

June 1913 Friendship develops with DH Lawrence and Frieda. Murry later describes the foursome swimming naked in a lake and feasting on steak and tomatoes. This relationship will partly provide inspiration for Lawrence’s novel, Women in Love, with KM serving as a model for Gudrun and Murry for Gerald.

July 1913 Moves with Murry to Baron’s Court, described by Ida as “a suburban flatlet with communal gardens at the back.” Murry occupies the study while KM works on the dining table.

November 1913 Completes opening chapters of “Maata”.

December 1913 Moves with Murry to 31 Rue de Tournon, Paris. Is attracted to bohemian writer Francis Carco. Writes “Something Childish but Very Natural”.

February 1914 Leaves Paris with Murry after he is declared bankrupt and returns to London. Carco helps them dispose of their furniture by selling it to brothels. Ida sends money by post, tearing a five-pound note in half and enclosing it in two separate envelopes to make sure it would not be stolen by postal workers.

April 1914 Moves with Murry to Fulham (102 Edith Grove).

July 1914 Moves with Murry to Chelsea (111 Arthur Street)

July 13, 1914 KM and Murry are witnesses at the wedding of DH Lawrence and Frieda.

August 4, 1914 War is declared.

October 1914 – Feb 1915 Moves with Murry to Rose Tree Cottage in Buckinghamshire, close to the Lawrences, whose frequent quarrels create a a strained atmosphere. First meeting with Kotelianski. In Between Two Worlds Murry, describes his endless philosophical discussions with Lawrence and Gordon Campbell which make KM feel isolated and estranged.

February 3, 1915 Leslie arrives in England for military training.

February 15, 1915 Brief trip to France to join Carco. The episode provides inspiration for “An Indiscreet Journey”.

Feb 25, 1915 Returns to Murry at Rose Tree Cottage.

March –May 1915 Divides her time between Murry’s flat in London and Carco’s flat in Paris, near the Quai des Fleurs, while Carco is at the front. Begins writing “The Aloe,” reevoking her New Zealand childhood.

June 1915 Moves with Murry to 5 Acacia Road in St John’s Wood. Receives frequent visits from Leslie while he is stationed in England. In the garden of this house grows KM’s pear tree.

October 7, 1915 Leslie Beauchamp is killed in France while demonstrating how to use a hand grenade. KM plunges into depression.

November 1915 Moves with Murry to Bandol in the south of France.

December 7, 1915 Murry returns to London.

December 1915 Receives a moving letter of sympathy from Lawrence consoling her for Leslie’s death.

December 31, 1915 – February 1916 Murry joins KM in Bandol at the Villa Pauline. KM rewrites “The Aloe.”

April 1916 Returns to England with Murry and moves to Higher Tregerthen in Cornwall to be near the Lawrences, but finds their company overwhelming.

June 1916 Moves with Murry to Mylor in the south Cornish coast.

September 1916 Murry starts work as a translator in military intelligence. He and KM take up residence in Bloomsbury at 3 Gower Street. Painter Dorothy Brett lived on the second floor; Dora Carrington in the attic.

Autumn 1916 Frequents Lady Ottoline Morrell in Garsington The circle includes: Lytton-Strachey, T.S. Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley among others.

November 1916 Friendship and correspondence with Bertrand Russell begins. First meeting with Virginia Woolf.

February 1917 Moves to a studio at 141a Church street in Chelsea, later joined by Ida. Murry moves to 47 Redcliffe Road. Friendship develops with Virginia Woolf.

April 1917 Begins writing for the New Age again. Proposes “Prelude” to the Hogarth Press.

Winter 1917 Discovers spot on right lung.

January – February 1918 Returns alone to Bandol to the Hotel Beau Rivage. Begins writing “Je Ne Parle Pas Français”. Ida arrives in Bandol. Has first lung hemorrhage.

March 1918 Flees to Paris with Ida where they are trapped by the German bombardment

April 11,1918 Returns to London with Ida.

May 3, 1918 KM and Murry are married at the Kensington Registery Office. KM wears Frieda Lawrence’s wedding ring from her first marriage.

May-June 1918 Spends six weeks in Cornwall with Anne Estelle Rice.

August 8, 1918 Annie Beauchamp dies in Wellington.

August 1918 Moves with Murry too 2 Portland Villas, “the elephant” in Hampstead. Ida comes to live with them as housekeeper.

November 11, 1918 End of World War I

February 1919 Murry becomes editor of The Athenaeum.

April 1919 Begins reviewing for The Athenaeum. Begins translating Chekhov’s letters with Koteliansky.

September 1919 Travels to San Remo with Murry and Ida. After Murry’s departure, moves with Ida to the Casetta Deerholm in Ospedaletti.

November 1919 Receives visit from Harold Beauchamp and his cousin Connie.

Mid-December 1919 Murry joins KM in Ospedaletti.

January 1920 Travels with Ida to France and enters a L’Hermitage, a clinic in Menton Receives insulting letter from DH Lawrence.

February 1920 Goes to live at Villa Flora with Cousin Connie and companion, Jinnie Fullerton.

April, 1920 Returns with Ida to the Elephant in Hampstead.

September 1920 Travels with Ida to France, residing at Villa Isola Bella in Menton.

Autumn 1920 Sobieniowski blackmails KM over youthful love letters. Assisted by Ida, works intensely on reviews and short stories, including “Miss Brill” and “The Daughters of the Late Colonel,” partially modeled on Ida. Learns of Murry’s liaison with Elizabeth Bibiesco.

December 2, 1920 Publication of Bliss and Other Stories.

December 1920 Murry joins her for Christmas in Menton.

May 1921-January 1922 Moves to Montreux, Switzerland with Ida. Moves to Chateau Belle Vue, Sierre where she is joined by Murry. Moves with Murry to Chalet des Sapins ( Montana-sur-Sierre), near her cousin Elizabeth. Writes “At the Bay”, “The Garden Party” and “The Doll’s House”. Obtains the address of Russian doctor Ivan Manoukhin from Koteliansky. Reads Cosmic Anatomy. Renews correspondence with A.R. Orage, already an enthusiast for Ouspensky and Gurdjieff.

January 30, 1922 Leaves for Paris with Ida

February – May 1922 Decides to try Manoukhin’s X-ray treatment. Murry joins her in Paris; Ida returns to Switzerland. Publication of The Garden Party and Other Stories. Finds treatment debilitating. Writes “The Fly”.

June, 1922 Returns to Switzerland, near Randogne with Murry. Moves to Sierre with Ida.

August 1922 Returns to London with Murry and Ida. Stays with Dorothy Brett. Meets Orage.

September 1922 Attends Ouspensky’s lectures. Obtains the address of the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in Fontainebleau from Ouspensky.

October 2, 1922 Travels with Ida to Paris

October 14, 1922 Examined by Dr. James C. Young, pupil of Gurdjieff.

October 16,1922 Enters the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, not as a pupil but as a guest, or special visitor. She will be befriended by Olgivanna, future wife of Frank Lloyd Wright, who will later publish a memoir of her friendship with KM in The Bookman, 1931 and by Alexandre de Salzmann and his wife, Jeanne. Ouspensky recounts a conversation at the institute with KM in In Search of the Miraculous. Orage will also publish his account of her life there in Talks with Katherine Mansfield at Fontainebleau in The Century, 1924.

January 9,1923 After Murry’s arrival at the institute for a visit, KM climbs a flight of stairs, haemorrhages and dies.

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Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield is considered the most talented modern short story writer in English. She is regarded as the pioneer of avant-gardism in the short story. Her writing is psychologically acute, accessible, and innovative. There is clarity and precision in her language. She has a resonant and distilled reaction to the experience. 

She is considered a seminal modernist, and her works are regarded in great esteem. She was able to reach a wide range of audiences because of the brevity of the genre she wrote in, its variety, and accessibility. She had developed a distinctive prose style. Her style had overtones of poetry. Her writing has the influence of Anton Chekhov, which can be seen in the subtlety of observation, in her obliqueness in narration, and delicacy of her stories. Her role in the development of the short story as a form of literature is undeniable.

Her short stories cover a wide range of thematic topics. These topics range from problems and difficulties in families, vulnerable and fragile nature of relationships, rising middle class, and its complexes, and the numbness related to them. Other themes include the extraction of life and energy from ordinary, mundane experiences, and the consequences of war faced by society, etc. 

She was contemporary of great writers like Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and like them, she plays her role in the evolution of the short story. She helped redefine the genre by doing experiments with the genre, themes, and subject matter. She had a prolific career during which she wrote journals, reviews, letters, etc. Her role as a significant modernist writer was recognized after the rise of feminist criticism in the 1970s.

She was a close friend and literary rival of Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf envied her skill as well as the audience that was attracted by her short stories. In sharp contrast to Woolf, Mansfield had an amorphous economic, social, sexual experience that was disapproved by Virginia Woolf. This relationship was not only based on envy; rather, Woolf respected her and communicated with her to learn from her. At her death, Woolf wrote in her diary that Katherine was the only person from whose writing she was jealous.

In her works, she questioned the nature of reality, challenged the certainties. She changed the underpinned facts of Victorian literature and replaced them with modernist attributes. In her works, we see a crucial role of gender where the story is presented from the male perspective while the values are of the female side. Her works focus on the marginalized of society. 

Shortly, her works are concrete, which communicates moods, transient emotions, and impressions, and these make her works seminal.

A Short Biography of Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield was the pen name of Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp. She was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on October 14 th , 1888. She belonged to a socially and commercially active family. Her father was born to a successful business family in Australia while her mother also belonged to a prosperous family. Both her parents had migrated from Australia to New Zealand. Her father had investments in business companies, insurances, and banks. She was the third child of her parents.

Her family was an English family whose previous generation had migrated to Australia for better financial prospects. She was the comparatively ignored child and spent most of her time with her maternal grandmother, who lived with her parents. She was a gifted child and wrote for her school magazines and other journals. At the age of nine, her first short story, Enna Blake , was published in The High School Reporter .

She was described by her relatives as kind of surly, an overly imaginative girl, and inquisitive in many matters. She was one of the founding members of her school magazine, wrote the most part of it, and edited it. She was admitted to Queen’s College in Harley Street, London. There she developed her interest in music, liberal arts, and languages. Her relations with her parents were not ideal, and for this reason, she didn’t visit them and spent most of her time in Britain. Her mother was weary of her homosexual tendencies.

She had peculiar sexual tendencies and was attracted to both men and women. Ida Baker was her friend and lifelong partner with whom she had intimate relations. Her first marriage was with George Brown in 1909, which ended soon in few days because they couldn’t go along. She had an affair with Garnett Trowell, and with him, she had become pregnant. Her first collection was In a German Pension , which was published in 1911.

During this time, she also had a relationship with George Bowden, which resulted later in marriage and separation in 1918. Due to her relationship, she was disinherited by her mother, and this led to the hard financial crisis in her life. She had a relationship with Floryan Sobieniowski in Germany, and from him, she contracted a sexually transmitted disease. This disease caused her much trouble later and was the reason for her weakness for the rest of her life.  

She met John Middleton Murry in 1911 and married him in 1918. In 1916, he and Katherine met a lady, Ottoline Morrel, and she introduced her to great writers of the day like Virginia Woolf, Mr. and Mrs. D. H. Lawrence, Lytton Strachey, Bertrand Russel, etc. She visited the front of France during World War I to visit her new lover Francis Carco who was a writer.  She was diagnosed with tuberculosis the same year. Her second collection of short stories, Bliss and Other Stories , was published in 1922.

In her last days, she was admitted to Gurdjieff Institute in France due to pulmonary problems. She died of pulmonary hemorrhage in the same hospital on January 9 th , 1923.

Katherine Mansfield’s Writing Style

Katherine’s first collection of short stories is based on sketches where she describes the coarseness and grossness of Germans. Sketches were then popular in journals, and she followed this trend. They described a specific segment of life and had no sufficient theme or plot development. Later changes came to her work as in other short stories; she traversed different topics and themes.

Her short stories are about everyday concerns. They are descriptive, full of imagery, metaphors, and symbols. The characters that she has featured are sensitive and warm-hearted. She wants to make the reader see through the descriptions what she wants to convey and feel a part of it. The descriptions in her short stories are vivid, which covers the minutest details. In her stories, there is a narrative presentation with an element of dialogue.

In her works, there are imperatives, questions, polite requests, exclamations, etc. which show the variety in characters. The language of her short stories is expressive and emotional, and simple. Her works interest the reader through their explorations of psychological detail.

Modernist Short Story

Mansfield made a short story a psychological sketch. This genre was considered by many readers and critics as a useless genre. She used it as the ex-centric vehicle of expression, and the estranged vision of women. She didn’t completely reject the conventions of short story writing rather made amends to the form. In conformity to literary modernism, she rejected conventional dramatic action and plot structure in favor of the character.

She retains her distinction from other modernists by not completely following the modernist tenets. Typical modernist issues like anomie, guilt, anxiety are not her only concerns. She has sardonic comments about sophistication. There are not only internal problems of mind, rather the common life problems as well, such as unhappiness, poverty, etc. shown in her works like Life of Ma Parker , Pictures .

There is a spiritual search in her work and a longing to return to the world of childhood, which added new dimensions to the modernist short story.

Narrative Technique

She was a professional, lifetime writer. Her narrative technique has several elements. Her short stories develop with the passage of time into slices of life. She offers miniatures which present an aspect of life true in the case of whole life. Her stories are apparently simple, but on the internal level, there are subversive attitudes and themes. There is mention of the ‘unmentionable’ aspects of life which are hidden in her carefully chosen lexicon.

These ironically subversive themes cover the criticism of conventional relationships, small-mindedness, and prejudice. There are some characters who narrate the interior monologue in a single text. She develops an appropriate narrative strategy and a distinctive voice for each character. She had a gift for impersonation, which relates to her experience as an actress.

She uses many grammatical devices that include exclamation, rhetorical question, the unfinished sentence, abrupt shift in syntax, etc. Her short stories in different collections abound with these features.

Dramatic Techniques

‘Nouvelle-instant’ or commonly known as ‘slices of life,’ is her most common dramatic technique that she uses in her works. It is the technique in which the action is brief and occupies a few moments. In her first collection, German Pension , she uses this technique in nine out of thirteen stories. This hallmark technique is further strengthened in her later works, where it is used in 12 stories in Bliss , 14 in The Garden Party , 5 in The Dove’s Nest , and 8 in Something Childish .  

This technique is divided further into two types, which include habitual and unique moments. The former type refers to happenings that are usual while the later to the happenings taking place once in life. ‘In medias res’ is another technique that she uses in her works; this is the reference to the foreknowledge of happenings. In longer stories like The Prelude , At the Bay , etc. she has made divisions based on scenes.  

The Epiphanic Moment

She refers to this moment as the ‘blazing moment,’ and it is related to the idea of ‘nouvelle-instant.’ Epiphany has the power to emphasize the unattractive reality which underlies human feelings. This technique is prominent in her short story Bliss . In this short story behind the sense of bliss, there are uncomfortable feelings of self-discovery. In Bliss , the protagonist and her husband have an epiphany at two different moments. They come to realize that they will not be there, but the tree that is there will remain even after them.

Another example is from her short story, At the Bay . In this work, the protagonist recognizes that the person she is flirting with is a womanizer. There is a profound realization in Mansfield’s epiphanic moments. It is not necessarily understood by the characters but is clearly perceived by the reader.

Literary Impressionism

Katherine Mansfield was greatly influenced by post-impressionist art. This impressionistic technique she transposed in her own literary works. This technique was employed in Literature with Naturalism. It was an attempt to present things with minimum efforts. Bates notes that it was the view that if a woman can be presented through her hands, then there is no need to portray the complete picture. Mansfield was the first writer who shaped it as a suitable technique to be used in a short story.

She prefers vignette to complete description, has a preoccupation with color, and lays emphasis on reflections and surfaces. She used these to alter perceptions; there is transition seen from present to past, to future. This is used as a metaphorical threshold, which helps in realization. A significant example is from The Tiredness of Rosabell , where a mirror is used to realize the harsh reality and even dream a fairy-tale scenario. Her short story Bank Holiday is an example which is wholly an example of a vignette. 

Incorporation of Symbolism

Mansfield had accepted influences from French Symbolist and Decadent movements. She, like Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and Arthur Symons is of the view that instead of descriptive analysis of abstract states of mind, concrete images should be used. Her symbolist work is essentially poetic and metaphorical in nature. One story in which this notion is signified is Miss Brill. These symbols are considered a powerful tool through which the reader is encouraged to discover the character’s development.

Flowers are used as a symbol in her short story The Garden Party , which represents sexuality. These are indicative of the end of innocence, and the corrupting effect on the characters. In Prelude and At the Bay , she uses the aloe plant as a symbol. It carries with itself a sense of mystery, troubles, and childlike concerns in the real world. It also signifies pains and intimidating fears of a lifetime. 

Use of Humor

In Mansfield’s short stories, there is the frequent use of humor noticed. She, through her use of psychological subtlety and narrative art and metaphorical flair, produces the effect of humor by capturing the nuances of consciousness. In her life, Katherine was known for being an amusing companion, and the same is seen in her literary works. It was her devotion to Oscar Wilde that perfected this art. 

Sarcastic and brittle comedic examples of her humor can be seen in her short story Bliss . In this story, two characters talk about tomato soup and its presence everywhere; the reason that is told for its presence is being eternal.

Her humor is a satire on the pseudo-intellectuals who say things that are of no value. She mimics the dandified tone of upper-class society. She mocks the depiction of grandiose by the use of ‘affected’ idiolects. An example of it is the ridiculous accent of Nurse Andrews from The Daughters of the Late Colonel . His snobbish character is known in few humorous sentences which wouldn’t have been done in long descriptions. 

Sun, Moon, and Sea Imagery

In her last works, Mansfield used esoteric imagery to describe the ironic self-discovery. She has a feminine approach as she presents her subconscious understanding of the universe through recurring symbols. In her work, the imagery of the moon is allied to mysterious and feminine. Sun is associated with the masculine.

She read a book Cosmic Anatomy on the Structure of Ego a year before death. This had a great influence on her because she took the notions of the opposition of sun and moon from this, which she used in her works. Under the influence of this book, she wrote the story Sun and Moon . It was written in 1918 and represented Blake’s concepts of beauty and innocence. This short story is considered a masterpiece of ironic exposé.

Sea is also used as a feminine symbol in her works. It is considered a feminine response which is allied to the moon. It is used in her work At the Bay , where it is employed to show Beryl’s moment of epiphany.     

Feminist Issues as a Theme

In her works, feminist issues are presented as a recurring motif. She exhibits the discontinuity between male and female experiences. There is a feminist awareness running throughout her works. Though she was not an open suffragette, her works talk about the problems that are faced by feminine gender. Her earlier critics were unable to discern feminist issues in her works. If her works are deeply analyzed, there are two recurring themes in her every work, viz. money, and love.

An example of her story with feminist issues is the Life of Ma Parker . She considers money as a source of independence; if a woman is deprived of money, then it is an attempt to deprive her of freedom. In her other stories, there is a harsh polemic about a lot of women.

Works Of Katherine Mansfield

Short stories.

• A Cup of Tea