Mansfield's "Prelude" to a new era: On the development of a narrative structure
Nadine Scherny
Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Trier (Faculty II: English), course: PS Literary Studies: Katherine Mansfield, language: English, abstract: Katherine Mansfield is a genius among the writers of the early 20thcentury and her work should not only be paid particular attention due to her credit for feminist literature; her work paved a way for all aspects of contemporary writing. The first ‘innovation’ she introduced was her choice of narrative form: the short story. It was not that the short story became her invention, but writing novels was still more fashionable, at least among Anglo-Saxon authors (Ganzmann 1985, 1-3). Yet, it is not purely by reason of her motivation to leave Victorian traditions behind that she preferred this form. Mansfield was destined to live a short life, thus, it fell to her lot to write short stories.1Fortunately, even “Prelude”, intended to become a novel entitled “The Aloe”, turned out to be a short story. Her will to modernize made her surpass ‘old-fashioned’ conventions and experiment with points of view through revising “The Aloe”, until she found a style that became characteristically her own. She managed to enable the readers of her stories to enter into a kind of personal relationship with the characters of her writings.This assignment shall investigate the development from “The Aloe” as an “auktorial” narrative to “Prelude” being more “personal”. First, it provides a brief overview of the story’s textual genesis. Afterwards, we shall have a close look at Mansfield’s point-of-view-technique: what were the circumstances for her experimenting? What is distinctive about Mansfield’s style and what are the ‘side effects’? Here, Mansfield’s “glimpses” shall be devoted an extra chapter, since these hold a special position in the improvement of Mansfield’s method. As a last point, we want to compare “Prelude” with its original version “The Aloe” to demonstrate the progression.
