Mansfield’s Short Stories
Abstract
This article discusses how emotions are depicted in two Katherine Mansfield’s short stories, ”Bliss” and ”Taking the Veil”. Emotions are mapped through linguistic markers such as adjectives and adverbs that imply a character’s emotional response to story events. The study focuses on narratorial discourse and distinguishes between verbalized speech and thought (free indirect discourse) and non-verbalised thought-processes (psycho-narration). The analysis is carried out by studying the deictic centre or the perspective in the short stories. The study shows that passages of psycho-narration and free indirect discourse are rich in emotional language, including such features as interjections, repetition and orthographic markers.
1. Introduction
Emotions often play a significant role in depicting a literary character’s mind. This study discusses how characters’ emotions are depicted in two Katherine Mansfield’s short stories, ”Bliss” and ”Taking the Veil”.1 The focus is on those sections in Mansfield’s stories that depict characters’ psyches and feelings. The analysis maps the features that imply the presence of consciousness or perspective in Katherine Mansfield’s texts. The analysis is carried out by studying linguistic features such as adjectives, adverbs and orthography to find out whose consciousness and emotions are depicted in the text.
Consciousness report is an umbrella term for several techniques that share some common features in depicting characters’ consciousness. This study focuses on the interplay between psycho-narration, the narrator’s rendering of characters’ psyches or their non-verbalised thought processes, and free indirect discourse, the narrator’s indirect quotation of the words that the characters say or think, their verbalised speech or thought. Both free indirect discourse and psycho-narration depict character speech within the framework of third person narrative, and in Mansfield’s stories characters’ feelings are often filtered
This article discusses how emotions are depicted in two Katherine Mansfield’s short stories, ”Bliss” and ”Taking the Veil”. Emotions are mapped through linguistic markers such as adjectives and adverbs that imply a character’s emotional response to story events. The study focuses on narratorial discourse and distinguishes between verbalized speech and thought (free indirect discourse) and non-verbalised thought-processes (psycho-narration). The analysis is carried out by studying the deictic centre or the perspective in the short stories. The study shows that passages of psycho-narration and free indirect discourse are rich in emotional language, including such features as interjections, repetition and orthographic markers.
1. Introduction
Emotions often play a significant role in depicting a literary character’s mind. This study discusses how characters’ emotions are depicted in two Katherine Mansfield’s short stories, ”Bliss” and ”Taking the Veil”.1 The focus is on those sections in Mansfield’s stories that depict characters’ psyches and feelings. The analysis maps the features that imply the presence of consciousness or perspective in Katherine Mansfield’s texts. The analysis is carried out by studying linguistic features such as adjectives, adverbs and orthography to find out whose consciousness and emotions are depicted in the text.
Consciousness report is an umbrella term for several techniques that share some common features in depicting characters’ consciousness. This study focuses on the interplay between psycho-narration, the narrator’s rendering of characters’ psyches or their non-verbalised thought processes, and free indirect discourse, the narrator’s indirect quotation of the words that the characters say or think, their verbalised speech or thought. Both free indirect discourse and psycho-narration depict character speech within the framework of third person narrative, and in Mansfield’s stories characters’ feelings are often filtered