Katherine Mansfield's Her First Ball Essay

In the opening, she shares her childhood encounters with women in prose with the children’s rhyme “a little girl who had a curl”. This personal anecdote introduces the topic of the portrayal of women in literature, as well as establishes a connection with her audience.

Anne Sexton was a junior-college dropout who, inspired by emotional distress, became a poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize as well as three honorary doctorates. Her poems usually dealt with intensely personal, often feminist, subject matter due to her tortured relationships with gender roles and the place of women in society. The movies, women’s magazines and even some women’s schools supported the notion that decent women took naturally to homemaking and mothering (Schulman). Like others of her generation, Sexton was frustrated by this fixed feminine role society was encouraging. Her poem “Cinderella” is an example of her views, and it also introduces a new topic of how out of touch with reality fairy tales often are. In “Cinderella”, Anne Sexton uses tone and symbolism to portray her attitude towards traditional gender roles and the unrealistic life of fairy tales.

In the familiar more traditional version, Cinderella is a poor maid girl that, with the help of fairy godmother, gets a chance to meet prince charming. They fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after, and then what? What is a happily ever after? Is this even a realistic thought? In the dark comedic poem Cinderella, Anne Sexton forces the reader to examine this question. Utilizing literary devices such as tone, imagery, and style, Sexton encourages the reader to think about how silly and unlikely a fairy tale ending actually is.

The restricted roles of women, are explored by Chevalier in Girl with a pearl earring, through literary techniques which convey women’s complete lack of power, forever stuck on the outside of a man’s world, trapped and anxious with the little power they manage to obtain.

The sole purposes of this essay are for the reader to have a deeper understanding of the novel by the use of intertextuality, but before one dives into the novel, first let us discuss what intertextuality is:

Anne Sexton was a junior-college dropout who, inspired by emotional distress, became a poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize as well as three honorary doctorates. Her poems usually dealt with intensely personal, often feminist, subject matter due to her tortured relationships with gender roles and the place of women in society. The movies, women’s magazines and even some women’s schools supported the notion that decent women took naturally to homemaking and mothering (Schulman). Like others of her generation, Sexton was frustrated by this fixed feminine role society was encouraging. Her poem “Cinderella” is an example of her views, and it also introduces a new topic of how out of touch with reality fairy tales often are. In “Cinderella”, Anne Sexton uses tone and symbolism to portray her attitude towards traditional gender roles and the unrealistic life of fairy tales.

Mansfield’s description throughout the narrative is intriguing and captivating, pulling the reader into the drill hall and making them sway to the “oft, melting, ravishing tune” as though they themselves could have been Leila. Moreover, her use of description allows her to create the character of the “fat man” and utilise him to portray the idea that “happiness [doesn’t] last for ever.” Because she describes him as the fat man, who is old and wearing a coat that “looked dusty with French chalk”, she creates an evident contrast between the beautiful characters she initially described. Through this imagery, Mansfield subtly portrays Leila’s fears of losing the beauty of this first ball and emphasises that in fact, beauty doesn’t last. However, Mansfield plunges the reader back in to the dance, such that the almost

In the real world, problems and complications come up and happily ever after’s don’t exist. Sexton takes the classic story of “Cinderella”, reworks it, and makes it into her own twisted version of a fairytale. She starts the audience off with a few little “rags-to-riches” accounts comparing modern culture’s unrealistic dreams to what life really is like. Then she goes into telling the readers the famously known fairytale in a sardonic tone. The audience gets a sense of frustration from her way of expressing herself in each little story she talks about. She shows the world that its not always rainbows and butterflies, the real world is more complicated than that.

The narrow futures of adult women shown in the novel are one way the author portrays female plight. The limitations characters face indicate the constructs of their unforgiving patriarchal environment. Adult women share the feeling of being trapped in their own marriages. The author represents isolation from the outside world in a metaphorical sense as, “waiting by the window” (Cisneros 11). Rafaela, a woman with an extremely controlling husband, illustrates how women in the novel are

Becky and Amelia’s values are determined by their similarities to Miss Swartz, and they both reflect aspects of what Miss Swartz represents; they are not true opposites. These three female characters, then, form a continuum of moral corruption. Lucinda Roanoke, Trollope’s woman from abroad, has a dangerous interiority that makes her much more than a representation. The implications of her interiority create the need for Lucy to be a truly good girl. This change from seeming good to being good creates a true dichotomy between Lucy and Lizzie.

In addition, the feminist view of sexuality is evident throughout Rossetti’s poem. Laura and Lizzie’s magical experience portrays the pursuit for sensual awareness while struggling between physical identity and spiritual salvation. Furthermore, “She clipped a precious golden lock, she dropped a tear more rare than pearl, then sucked their fruit globes fair or red, sweeter than honey from the rock” (ll. 126-29) and “sucked until her lips were sore” (l. 136). With blatant sexual undertones, this pivotal moment signifies the character’s transition from maiden to woman or innocence to experience. Additionally, this exchange could be a metaphor for Laura’s relinquishment of her sacred virginity. As Laura falls sicker and slowly begins to deteriorate, Rossetti illustrates the consequences of succumbing to the temptation of men’s deceit and the importance of remaining pure. With use of vivid imagery, Rossetti further emphasizes the animalistic and uncanny

In “Miss Brill,” Katherine Mansfield utilizes Miss Brill’s thoughts and actions and the surroundings to characterize Miss Brill as a lonely character. Mansfield immediately introduces Miss Brill with a very odd scene that shows her conversation with the fur coat. This quickly and effectively establishes the type of person Miss Brill is. As a result, Mansfield suggests that Miss Brill is a lonely and an “abnormal” person to illustrate to the audience how society treats those who are not considered “normal” through the later actions of a young couple.

In “Lady Susan”, the gender roles or the gender expectations are revealed by the relationships between varied characters, like the affair between Lady Susan and Mr. De Courcy, or the maternity showed by Mrs. Vernon to Frederica. Aims to discuss the female gender expectations in this work, I want to compare Lady Susan and Mrs. Vernon. Specifically, I want to evaluate the conducts and thoughts showed by Lady Susan and Mrs. Vernon to discuss the gender expectations as a female. And through those comparisons I want to argue how to build a positive and good female role.

Mansfield created the story with the intention of allowing it to be open for various interpretations; though she includes specific detail concerning the characters Mansfield does not elucidate them in a manner that clearly defines their personalities. The story, like the budding rose, is one that never peaks to maturity, but rather remains in the developing stage because of its ambiguities which cause it to be discussed and interpreted in many varying ways.

Katherine Mansfield was born October 14, 1888 in Wellington New Zealand. Mansfield was a well-known and respected prominent writer in the 20th century. She attended Queens College in London with her sisters. Mansfield broke barriers for female writers in the early 20th century and even still today. Her stories commonly focus on the theme of reality /world versus human nature while also touching the themes of the darker and more complex sides of life.