Bliss is a modernist

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 by Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield

Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield left for Great Britain in 1908 where she encountered Modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and...

, first published in 1920

1920 in literature

The year 1920 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Agatha Christie publishes her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, introducing the long-running character detective, Hercule Poirot....

. It was first published in the English Review in August 1918 and later reprinted in Bliss and Other Stories.

Plot summary

The story follows a day in the life of its main character, Bertha, in Hampstead

Hampstead

Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. She feels blissful and experiences her whole existence as perfect while at the same time seeming childish and naive. On this particular day, Bertha has invited friends for dinner. The dinner guests are characterized as shallow and vain by their small talk. At the end of the story, when the guests leave, Bertha discovers that her husband is having an affair with one of her dinner guests, Pearl Fulton..

Characters in "Bliss"

• Bertha Young, the main character, age 30. She is depicted as being extremely naïve but happy. The reader is bound to sympathize with her, because she is the only character in the story who seems to have genuine feelings towards somebody else. The presence of servants in Harry's and Bertha's house implies that the couple is part of the upper class.

• Harry, Bertha's husband. Like most characters, he is characterized only through Bertha's thoughts towards him. At the end of the story it becomes clear that her view of him was not entirely accurate.

• Little Bertha/Little B, Bertha's baby daughter
• Mary - servant
• Nurse - Little B's nanny

Dinner guests

• Mr and Mrs Norman Knight: refer to each other when alone or in the company of close friends as "Mug" and "Face"; a playwright and an interior designer, respectively.

• Eddie Warren: a poet, and an effeminate and possibly homosexual (as well as a bisexual or heterosexual) character

• Pearl Fulton: Bertha's new 'find'; an attractive blonde woman who Bertha is immediately drawn to. There is an air of uncertainty about Pearl, though Bertha is not entirely sure what it is that they share which unites them. She later realises it is a desire for Harry, and that Pearl is sharing in Bertha's Bliss. Bertha does not know Pearl very well, but falls in love with her nonetheless (as she always did fall in love with beautiful women who had something strange about them). The language describing social outburst is fitting for a middle class family that is concerned about image and acceptable behavior.

Pearl is positively characterized by Bertha's thoughts and feelings towards her. Harry seemingly despises her, but since the story is told through the eyes of Bertha, the reader is incapable of seeing Harry's deceit. Bertha possibly has homoerotic feelings towards Pearl, as she reckons that it is Pearl who seems to inspire the bliss within her, and also the newfound sexual desire towards her own husband. These thoughts induce the reader to ponder on the implications of being homosexual in the early 20th century.

Nature - the pear tree

Bertha sees the blooming pear

Pear

The pear is any of several tree species of genus Pyrus and also the name of the pomaceous fruit of these trees. Several species of pear are valued by humans for their edible fruit, but the fruit of other species is small, hard, and astringent....

tree in the garden as a symbol of her happiness and her friendship with Pearl. However, when Bertha's mood changes rapidly in the end, the tree remains the same, showing the error in Bertha's perception of a connection. ("But the pear tree was as lovely as ever and as full of flower and as still.")

The pear tree has also been described as phallic in nature and referring to Harry himself; at one point the pear tree is said to be growing towards the moon, the moon having been compared to Pearl at an earlier point in the story. This is said to potentially symbolize Harry's lust for Pearl.

Other Interpretations of the text

The title 'Bliss' may imply a larger irony by Mansfield: the main character Bertha is a woman concerned with material perfection, and an innocence about not only the external world but her internal world as well. She comments on her feelings towards her husband as those of a friend, but when thinking of her new friend Pearl she feels for the first time a sexual lust, but unable to look deeper in to these feelings she is having and without the vocabulary to express it, she turns from her own feelings, pushing them back to focus her energy on the materialism of her dinner party. As Mansfield brings us through the story perhaps she wants us to feel as shocked by the realization of the affair as Bertha, that 'ignorance is bliss'. But that it is our choice whether or not we wish to live in ignorance, or dive deeper into ourselves even if it scares us to discover what we find there. The last lines of this story are also immensely important as well, Pearl's line “your lovely Pear tree” echoes in the reader's mind, who is she referring to- Harry and the affair she had with him, or Bertha and flirtation between them, or perhaps Pearl (like Mansfield herself) is bisexual and referring to them both.

External links

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