Paper details:

Explore the theme of consciousness in connection with the Modernist texts ‘Bliss’ by Katherine Mansfield and ‘The Life and Death of Harriet Frean’ by May Sinclair. The main characters of these two stories should be explored psychoanalytically.
Please consider that the Unit is called Modernism, which is why we are studying Modernist texts. So please try and include something about Modernism.

Explore the theme of consciousness in connection with the Modernist texts ‘Bliss’ by Katherine Mansfield and ‘The Life and Death of Harriet Frean’ by May Sinclair

This essay will take the form of exploring the theme of consciousness in connection with Katherine Mansfield’s short story Bliss and May Sinclair’s novel ‘The Life and Death of Harriet Frean’. Both texts are open to a psychoanalytic reading and focus on the life of a woman living in repression. Whilst, Bliss appears to be more of an expression of what repression feels like on the inside, ‘The Life and Death of Harriet Frean’ appears to be a case study which explores repression from the outside.

Katherine Mansfield uses Bliss as a lens in the 1920’s harsh realities of gender biased marriages in which power and control were held by the man and the expectations of only heterosexual relationships. This enabled the males to dictate the family and behave how they wanted to. It also highlights how the women of the 1920’s were vulnerable and powerless due to the traditions which said that they couldn’t work and make a life for themselves, making marriage their only way out to have a life.

Like most of Mansfield’s other texts, Bliss opens in media res, allowing the reader to imagine that Bertha has been feeling this way for a while, as highlighted by the free indirect discourse “she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk…” Due to Victorian standards and expectations of women, one could not behave in the way they wanted to, be it running, skipping or shouting. As highlighted by Bertha’s age which is almost an indication that it is deemed, could be that people would have judged her as being drunk or simply not proper. Mansfield’s merge of third person and first person narration has the affect of making the readers privy to only Bertha’s perspective so that they get to know Bertha almost better than she knows herself.

Bertha’s awareness of her own sensuality starts as she walks home along the street. At first there is a suggestion that this is a spiritual state, but it is quickly revealed as repressed sexual desire. Upon arriving home, she tries to find an outlet for these new feelings by arranging the fruit that have been delivered for that evening’s dinner party. Mansfield describes this process lovingly and sensually: “There were tangerines and apples stained with strawberry pink. Some yellow pears, smooth as silk, some white grapes covered with a silver bloom and a big cluster of purple ones.”

Bertha’s constant reassurance of how happy she is serves as an indication that she may be hiding something from herself, and that what she is experiencing may not be bliss, but she refuses to realise this. Through Bertha’s stream of consciousness we get the hollowness of her life as she lists the positive things in her life ….. It is through this list that the reader finds out that she spends very little time with her daughter and that she considers her husband a “a good pal”.

At the party, Bertha feels drawn to Pearl Fulton, her pretty and stylish new friend. She shows Pearl the pear tree in the garden. Through Mansfield’s symbolism of the pear tree, the reader gets a strong sense of Bertha’s consciousness and desires. The pear symbol can be read as an indicator of her lust for Bertha. A pear with its bosom shape is often compared with the shape of a woman’s body. However, the fact that Bertha only stares at the tree from a distance and does not eat from it, suggests that she continues to repress her desire for Pearl.

Standing at the window of the drawing room together, she experiences a sense of silent, intimate communion with Pearl: “How long did they stand there? Both, as it were, caught in that circle of unearthly light, understanding each other perfectly, creatures of another world, and wondering what they were to do in this one with all this blissful treasure that burned in their bosoms and dropped, in silver flowers, from their hair and hands.”

But Bertha represses any physical feelings she may have for Pearl and realises, for perhaps the first time, that she desires her husband. But Bertha’s ‘bliss’ is soon thwarted. Having embraced the idea of both a more intimate friendship with Pearl Fulton and stronger physical relationship with her husband, Bertha’s hopes in both directions are dashed when she realises that Pearl and Harry are having an affair with each other and that she is excluded from intimacy with both. Some critics, such as Merja Makinen, have questioned Mansfield’s portrayal of female sexuality in Bliss. Having recognised her own sexuality, even to the extent of threatening to overcome the norm of the passive female, Bertha is pushed back into a corner where married women have very little say in how they express their sexuality.

Bertha is represented as experiencing a crisis of identity. Bertha struggled to integrate her internal and external selves within the structures of a male-dominated society. Like other Modernist writers, Mansfield focuses on her characters’ internal life rather than the external world.

The key to many of Mansfield’s short stories is the moment of epiphany; the point at which the character achieves a degree of self-realisation. But this realisation rarely leads to happiness, in Bliss, in a moment of aching poignancy, Bertha’s sexual awakening is quickly followed by her discovery of her husband’s infidelity with Miss Fulton. Her pain is expressed by Mansfield’s use of unplayed music as a symbol. Bertha is an instrument eager to be played for the first time: Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle? Mansfield’s characters live in a world where options for women are limited. Bliss is Mansfield’s best known exposition of female sexuality.

Paper details:

Explore the theme of consciousness in connection with the Modernist texts ‘Bliss’ by Katherine Mansfield and ‘The Life and Death of Harriet Frean’ by May Sinclair. The main characters of these two stories should be explored psychoanalytically.
Please consider that the Unit is called Modernism, which is why we are studying Modernist texts. So please try and include something about Modernism.

Explore the theme of consciousness in connection with the Modernist texts ‘Bliss’ by Katherine Mansfield and ‘The Life and Death of Harriet Frean’ by May Sinclair

This essay will take the form of exploring the theme of consciousness in connection with Katherine Mansfield’s short story Bliss and May Sinclair’s novel ‘The Life and Death of Harriet Frean’. Both texts are open to a psychoanalytic reading and focus on the life of a woman living in repression. Whilst, Bliss appears to be more of an expression of what repression feels like on the inside, ‘The Life and Death of Harriet Frean’ appears to be a case study which explores repression from the outside.

Katherine Mansfield uses Bliss as a lens in the 1920’s harsh realities of gender biased marriages in which power and control were held by the man and the expectations of only heterosexual relationships. This enabled the males to dictate the family and behave how they wanted to. It also highlights how the women of the 1920’s were vulnerable and powerless due to the traditions which said that they couldn’t work and make a life for themselves, making marriage their only way out to have a life.

Like most of Mansfield’s other texts, Bliss opens in media res, allowing the reader to imagine that Bertha has been feeling this way for a while, as highlighted by the free indirect discourse “she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk…” Due to Victorian standards and expectations of women, one could not behave in the way they wanted to, be it running, skipping or shouting. As highlighted by Bertha’s age which is almost an indication that it is deemed, could be that people would have judged her as being drunk or simply not proper. Mansfield’s merge of third person and first person narration has the affect of making the readers privy to only Bertha’s perspective so that they get to know Bertha almost better than she knows herself.

Bertha’s awareness of her own sensuality starts as she walks home along the street. At first there is a suggestion that this is a spiritual state, but it is quickly revealed as repressed sexual desire. Upon arriving home, she tries to find an outlet for these new feelings by arranging the fruit that have been delivered for that evening’s dinner party. Mansfield describes this process lovingly and sensually: “There were tangerines and apples stained with strawberry pink. Some yellow pears, smooth as silk, some white grapes covered with a silver bloom and a big cluster of purple ones.”

Bertha’s constant reassurance of how happy she is serves as an indication that she may be hiding something from herself, and that what she is experiencing may not be bliss, but she refuses to realise this. Through Bertha’s stream of consciousness we get the hollowness of her life as she lists the positive things in her life ….. It is through this list that the reader finds out that she spends very little time with her daughter and that she considers her husband a “a good pal”.

At the party, Bertha feels drawn to Pearl Fulton, her pretty and stylish new friend. She shows Pearl the pear tree in the garden. Through Mansfield’s symbolism of the pear tree, the reader gets a strong sense of Bertha’s consciousness and desires. The pear symbol can be read as an indicator of her lust for Bertha. A pear with its bosom shape is often compared with the shape of a woman’s body. However, the fact that Bertha only stares at the tree from a distance and does not eat from it, suggests that she continues to repress her desire for Pearl.

Standing at the window of the drawing room together, she experiences a sense of silent, intimate communion with Pearl: “How long did they stand there? Both, as it were, caught in that circle of unearthly light, understanding each other perfectly, creatures of another world, and wondering what they were to do in this one with all this blissful treasure that burned in their bosoms and dropped, in silver flowers, from their hair and hands.”

But Bertha represses any physical feelings she may have for Pearl and realises, for perhaps the first time, that she desires her husband. But Bertha’s ‘bliss’ is soon thwarted. Having embraced the idea of both a more intimate friendship with Pearl Fulton and stronger physical relationship with her husband, Bertha’s hopes in both directions are dashed when she realises that Pearl and Harry are having an affair with each other and that she is excluded from intimacy with both. Some critics, such as Merja Makinen, have questioned Mansfield’s portrayal of female sexuality in Bliss. Having recognised her own sexuality, even to the extent of threatening to overcome the norm of the passive female, Bertha is pushed back into a corner where married women have very little say in how they express their sexuality.

Bertha is represented as experiencing a crisis of identity. Bertha struggled to integrate her internal and external selves within the structures of a male-dominated society. Like other Modernist writers, Mansfield focuses on her characters’ internal life rather than the external world.

The key to many of Mansfield’s short stories is the moment of epiphany; the point at which the character achieves a degree of self-realisation. But this realisation rarely leads to happiness, in Bliss, in a moment of aching poignancy, Bertha’s sexual awakening is quickly followed by her discovery of her husband’s infidelity with Miss Fulton. Her pain is expressed by Mansfield’s use of unplayed music as a symbol. Bertha is an instrument eager to be played for the first time: Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle? Mansfield’s characters live in a world where options for women are limited. Bliss is Mansfield’s best known exposition of female sexuality.