Katherine Mansfield and Modernism in the Short Story

The standard methodology of the short story previous to the era of Modernism had been to achieve the effect of condensation of the larger world into the compactness afforded by the inherent brevity of the form. Unlike a novel which can span time and space and have the luxury of rabbit trails to be followed and forgotten, the short story by its very nature demands contraction. Modernism works in some ways to invert this idea by exploding the minute into the vast. One of the key elements of Katherine Mansfield's short fiction is the amplification of the small moment into one of universal significance.

This alienating irony is facilitated through a Modernist usage of language that pares away the chaff so that the only thing left are almost skeletal stalks of linguistic wheat. Mansfield can take a seemingly uncomplicated item and transform it into something that extends both the social status of a character while also commenting on the larger issues associated with class. It is not the fact that a character can easily afford an entire jar of roses that has significance; it is that lilacs she rejects are a less impressive symbol of status and bearing. Then there is the aesthetic quality associated with roses and lilacs and those qualities are consistent with the deeply ironic tone the story takes from the beginning. Roses are beautiful; lilacs at best merely pretty.