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Katherine Mansfield (Beauchamp) 1888 (Wellington, New Zealand) – 1923 (Fontainebleau, France) Socially prominent and wealthy family Talented cello player Started writing at college (Queen’s College in London) Published her first short stories in 1906 in New Zealand
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Katherine Mansfield (Beauchamp) • 1888 (Wellington, New Zealand) – 1923 (Fontainebleau, France) • Socially prominent and wealthy family • Talented cello player • Started writing at college (Queen’s College in London) • Published her first short stories in 1906 in New Zealand • Left NZ in 1908 for good • Travelled through Europe, bohemian lifestyle • The only writer Virgina Woolf was jealous of • Bisexual: few lesbian relationships • 1909: Became pregnant of one man, married another (George Bowden), who she left the same day she married him; miscarriage • Death of brother in World War I in 1915 • Married John Middleton Murry in 1918
Suffered of depression and tuberculosis • Died of the complications of tuberculosis in 1923 • Chosen short story: The Lady’s Maid about a maid who is telling a “madam” about her life serving her lady. • Published in 1922 in The Garden Party and Other Short Stories. • Modernist writer • peak of modernism between 1900 – 1920 • pessimistic view of life • common theme: a dysfunctional individual trying in vain to make sense of an urban and fragmented society. • reaction to the emergence of city life as a central force in society.
Style characteristic: free indirect speech (a combination of 3rd person narration combined with 1st person direct speech. Usage of rhethorical questions). • Example of free indirect speech • He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. And just what pleasure had he found, since he came into this world? • In The Lady’s Maid Katherine Mansfield uses this technique as well but this time by talking to an unknown madam. The effect is the same. • ...Of course, I couldn't. I had my young ladies. And what would I have looked like on a donkey in my uniform?