| Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) spent all her life wandering to look for the appropriate settlement for her physical body and spirit. She is one of the most outstanding short-story writers in Modern British literary arena. Also, the repeatedly theme of New Zealand of her stories has made her a real Zelanian writer.This thesis mainly use the dreams of characters in Mansfield's stories to analyze the recollections and imagination of them, and to explore the vacancy and the feeling of lost of the spirit after they awakes from dreams. Together considering the autobiographic feature and the personal experience, we can discover that the writer has something in common in the spiritual aspect with the characters. The correspondence of the characters and the writer can help us undertake the analysis of Mansfield's recollections and the imagination, and seek her pursuing of the spirit.The whole article contains four parts:The preface will put out the former research work of Mansfield, and point out the main point of the thesis and the thinking of research. Mansfield's novels include a lot of dreams. Dreams are not only the a narrative skill of stream of consciousness writing, but a carrier of the spiritual pursing. Thus use the dream as the researching object can look deep into the recollections and imagination of the writer and the characters, and explore their spiritual status, as well as the realistic aspect of the figures.In the first chapter, the thesis will analyze the recollections and imagination of the characters of the stories. First, the article will generalize and classify the dreams of Mansfield's stories. From children, teenagers, adults to old people, Mansfield covered dreams of all ages. They either indulged in the recollections of the old times (mainly old people), or obsessed in the fantasy of future (mainly young people). Therefore a few representative works will be taken into account. The first section will analyze the looking back of the characters, and will be divided into four aspects, including recognizing the realistic things, going back to the old times, seeking for the future, and losing memories, to see the status of recollections in their lives, as well as the wondering condition of their spirit. The second section will analyze the imagination of the future, and will put into four kinds with the order of age:the bewilderingly status of first contacting with the world, losing the dreamful house, the fatigue of life, and the impossibility of running away, and to analyze how this kind of fantasy has played its role in the meaning of their lives, and the aimless spiritual status after the falling of dreams. The third one will discuss the realistic status of the characters, and discover that in the real world, they on one side, wish to gain others' understanding, and on the other side will put a mask on the real selves.The second chapter mainly focus on the writer's recollections and imagination. The writer, similar to the characters in the spirit, was also deeply involved in the recalling of the past:the New Zealand, and the imagination of the future:the writing. The first part of this chapter will dig the meaning of New Zealand in the writer's life. It can be seen that her attitude toward New Zealand had changed from being tired of to looking forward, and back to disappointment. New Zealand in her stories is a seemingly beautiful place, however, also contained anguished dreams. The newborn and the death, the naivety and the sophistication, they all could be seen in the imagine of New Zealand, which was not the permanent harbor of her spirit. The second part of this chapter will research the meaning of writing in her life. On one side, she liked writing, and writing is the dream of her young age, also the spiritual comfort when she came into predicament. She hoped to acquire peace through writing, and wished to extend her life by leaving work in the world. But on the other side, the anxiety came with the writing life and her desire for being healthy drove her to quit writing on new pieces. By analyzing her last work "The Canary" we can find out that writing could only bring her temporary peace. Writing is not her religion, yet not her ultimate faith of life. The last section will show the status of the writer in the real world. She often turned up with different features. She was reluctant to part with the individual happy of spirit, while at the same time she wished others could truly understand her. This kind of conflicts of the spirit and the incurable desperation of her physical body made her given up everything in her last days, and went to the Fontainebleau looking for the psychotherapy, hoping can obtain the Rebirth of her mind. She spent very short time there, and she did not write new stories, as well as the limitation of other resources, this thesis cannot confirm whether or not did she finally find the new spiritual settlement. But by researching, we can be sure that she had felt spiritual pleasure there. Until the end of her life, Mansfield had not given up her endeavor of looking for the habitat of her spiritual world. |
PDF Full Text Request