Mansfield and Woolf

*Reminder for essay:

Mansfield, "A Dill Pickle" 1920 (226)

Mansfield -- biographical (remote link)

Introduction:

> sentences, craft: e.g., p. 227: "'The colder,' she laughed…"; mimics interruption (vs. convergence, flow); insensitivity, separateness of the man

> focalizes Vera, main character; dialogue mediated through her consciousness (but little free indirect discourse: why?)

[FOCALIZE (focalizer, focalized object): The presentation of a scene through the subjective perception of a character. The term can refer to the person doing the focalizing (the focalizer) or to the object that is being perceived (the focalized object). In literature, one can achieve this effect through first-person narration, free indirect discourse . . . Focalize, on narratology site, Dino Felluga]

Free indirect discourse

Opening of "Bliss" by Mansfield:

Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at -- nothing -- at nothing, simply.
        What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly by a feeling of bliss -- absolute bliss! -- as though you'd suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe? . . .
        Oh, is there no way you can express it without being "drunk and disorderly"? How idiotic civilisation is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?

In Joyce and Mansfield FID is "a third-person narrator's voice blended with that of a dramatized character so that the narrator appeared to merge into the text and to relinquish responsibility for it" (Hanson 1).

Simple example (Rimmon-Kenan 111):

DD: He said "I love her" (reporting verb "said" present, or implied; utterance is present tense)

ID: He said that he loved her. (reporting verb always present; and conjunction 'that' present or implied; past tense)

FID: He loved her. (deletion of reporting verb and conjunction)

FID has the "capacity to reproduce the idiolect of a character's speech or thought -- some would add: pre-verbal perceptions, whether visual, auditory or tactile -- within the narrator's reporting language"; a vehicle for representing the stream of consciousness. Typically literary, since only possible in mimetic texts (Rimmon-Kenan 114).

Example, showing difference of indirect from free indirect discourse (from: http://osf1.gmu.edu/~dkaufman/narrative.htm):

Standard third-person omniscient: "When she looked out over the ballroom, she noticed that he was handsome and she realized that she did not know what to do."

Free indirect discourse: "She looked out over the ballroom. He was indeed quite handsome. What was she going to do?"

Note deletion of "she noticed; she realized," capturing more immediately character's flow of consciousness.

References:

Clare Hanson. Short Stories and Short Fictions, 1880-1980. London: Macmillan, 1985.
Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London & New York: Methuen, 1983.

"A Dill Pickle": who speaks here? --

He must have felt that shock of recognition in her for he looked up and met her eyes. Incredible! He didn't know her! She smiled; he frowned. (226)

But now, as he spoke, that memory faded. His was the truer. Yes, it had been a wonderful afternoon, full of geranium and marigold and verbena, and -- warm sunshine. Her thoughts lingered over the last two words as though she sang them. (227)

Mansfield and Woolf -- modernists, women

Woolf, "Women and fiction" (379)

woman's style?

in "A Dill Pickle": beyond self: obscure lives of women? (Vera's consciousness . . )
-- order of things a convention? -- beyond? -- critical of society?
-- (note: Vera's initiative never shown, all happens at his behest; except for final letter)

Students: comment on Mansfield's story in the light of Woolf's criteria for women's writing. (+ how this might be related to an overall interpretation of the story). Point to specific passages. / Example comments


Woolf, "Slater's Pins have no Points" 1928-29 (324)

Woolf -- biographical (remote link)

Modernism: "no stable ego" (Lawrence, cited 205)

Intro: "Modern Fiction" on life

"Slater's Pins":

Main issue: utilitarian (pins) vs. aesthetic (Bach, etc.), frames Julia's separateness

style: sentence rhythms, mimetic function: e.g., p. 326 (2); p. 329; -- figurative / literal (aesthetic / mundane)

structure: whole story appears to occur in 10-20 seconds; phases of present / memory / interpretation (story projects the past, much retrospection, rather than forward movement -- other than finding the pin!)

narrator: Fanny's point of view, but incorporating echoes of what she recalls, especially the recollections of Miss Kingston; what Fanny experiences, learns . . . ( < epiphany, 329)

repeated conflicts / oppositions:

How to understand Julia Craye? My suggestion: her frequently conflicted state suggests some underlying frigidity from which she cannot free herself. Her inability to break through the "pane of glass": note number of references to panes, windows. Rhythm of conflicts hints at the underlying "caves" of the character of Julia.

Modernism -- see this page

return to course page

Document prepared September 29th 2002 / updated February 8th 2004