Disillusionment In Katherine Mansfield’s Short Stories-a Perspective Of Frame Theory

Katherine Mansfield (1888—1923) is a famous short story writer in British modern literary history.For all her life, she creates88short stories and a large number of literature reviews, diaries, letters, readingnotes and poems. Through her short life, she makes a great contribution to the development of modernfiction. Hence, she is crowned as “the master of short stories”(Alpers17).To Mansfield, sense of disillusionment is the main theme in her short-lived literary career. In her shortstories, characters of different ages including children, adolescents, adults and aged people all perceive thedeep sense of disillusionment. However, for a long time, critics have tended to analyze her writingtechnique and style from the perspective of stylistics. Recently, some scholars analyze her works from thethematic study. While, this thesis employs frame theory-one branch of cognitive linguistics-as atheoretical guide to analyze the disillusionment, and attempts to interpret the characters’ psychologicalactivities, the change of their minds, and the forming procedure and essence of the disillusionment.The thesis begins with a brief introduction to Katherine Mansfield and her works, reviewing thecritical history of Mansfield as well as the related comments on her works. Based on the literature review athome and abroad, the author of the thesis presents the research motivation, questions and objectives. At last,the author states the structure of this thesis.The main body of this thesis consists of four chapters. In chapter one, the author focuses on thethorough study of the guiding theory-frame theory, including its origin, development, characteristics andthrows light on the feasibility of using frame theory to analyze the disillusionment. It also concludesrevelation from the frame theory to disillusionment. Chapter two mainly devotes to the study of children’s and adolescents’ disillusionment under theframe theory. Through the analysis on “Sun and Moon” and “The Garden-Party”, it can be seen that thecharacters encounter the ruin of hope resulting from the conflicts between the ideal frame and reality frame.Chapter three mainly inquires into the adults’ disillusionment under the frame theory. After analyzingof “Bliss” and “The Stranger”, it indicates that the both parties of the marriage can not get happiness owingto the conflicts between fantasy and reality.Chapter four primarily explores the old people’s disillusionment under the frame theory. In “Life ofMa Parker” and “An Ideal Family”, it reflects the cruel reality and the indifferent relationships in capitalistsociety.Based on the above analysis, this thesis draws the conclusion. All the characters in these chosen shortstories suddenly realize the dilemmas they are trapped at the end of the story, understand the essence of life,and finally suffer from the deep sense of disillusionment. Thereby, the frame theory practically offers a newperspective to analyze the theme of disillusionment in Mansfield’s short stories.