Voice From Heart: On Katherine Mansfield's Creation Of The Character's Inner World

In Katherine Mansfield's short stories the level of subtlety and psychological insight is striking. This thesis tries to discuss Mansfield's art in creating the characters' inner world. Katherine Mansfield is a master in penetrating into the characters' psychological world. Her works concentrate on the inner mood, which is revealed to the reader vividly by her successful dealing with the story. The interior life like human isolation, disillusionment, paradoxes of idealism and reality, beauty and ugliness, joy and suffering are impressive in her stories. No matter what kind of character, innocent adolescent, man and woman in happy or unhappy marital life, old lady or man in his advanced age, Katherine Mansfield can show in depth their complicated and subtle inmost feelings.First, instead of the strictly structured plots of her predecessors in the genre, Mansfield's stories are free from conventional plots. Internal crisis has replaced external crisis. Mansfield skillfully diverts the readers' attention away from plot and invites them instead into the human mind. Second, when Mansfield shows her main character's feelings, she often uses her minor characters as a foil to her main character's psychological world. The minor characters either form distinct contrast with the protagonist or have close connection with the main character in terms of inner feelings. Third, Katherine Mansfield's peculiar gift also lies in her interpretation of subtle and unsayable feelings which lie hidden under men's everyday behavior and trivial events. With much attention to small details of human behavior, Mansfield's stories of delicate plainness present exquisite inner feelings. Finally, the character's psychological world is presented to the reader also through the application of symbolism. Symbolism is constant and largely psychological in Mansfield's work. Abstract feelings are conveyed through numerous kinds of concrete symbols from material things to characters' habitual actions. In this way Mansfield's stories offer an entrance to ordinary lives and subtle feelings.