Pictures (short story)
Encyclopedia
Pictures is a 1917 short story by Katherine Mansfield
. It was first published under the title of The Common Round in the New Age
on 31 May 1917 and later as The Pictures in Art and Letters in Autumn 1919. It was then reprinted as Pictures in Bliss and Other Stories.
; she sees a milkboy; she walks into a café where a waitress is saying to the cashier that she was given a brooch the day before. Miss Moss cannot have tea because the café is closed however. Then she goes to Mr Kadgit's but his charwoman tells her he is not there because it is Saturday. Next she goes to Mr Bithem's, an employment agency, and he tells her there is no work for her. She then decides to go into a café and there a stout man sits beside her and then they leave together.
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...
. It was first published under the title of The Common Round in the New Age
The New Age
The New Age was a British literary magazine, noted for its wide influence under the editorship of A. R. Orage from 1907 to 1922. It began life in 1894 as a publication of the Christian Socialist movement; but in 1907 as a radical weekly edited by Joseph Clayton, it was struggling...
on 31 May 1917 and later as The Pictures in Art and Letters in Autumn 1919. It was then reprinted as Pictures in Bliss and Other Stories.
Plot summary
Miss Moss wakes up in the morning and she is hungry because she didn't have dinner the night before, nor is she going to have breakfast : she cannot afford it. Then her landlady turns up and gives her a letter hoping that that would be the rent, but it is note from an employment agency, saying they will get back to her. The landlady walks out with the letter. Then Miss Moss goes for a walk in the streets of LondonLondon
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 sees a milkboy; she walks into a café where a waitress is saying to the cashier that she was given a brooch the day before. Miss Moss cannot have tea because the café is closed however. Then she goes to Mr Kadgit's but his charwoman tells her he is not there because it is Saturday. Next she goes to Mr Bithem's, an employment agency, and he tells her there is no work for her. She then decides to go into a café and there a stout man sits beside her and then they leave together.
Characters
- Miss Ada Moss, a contraltoContraltoContralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
singer. She is unemployed and penniless. - Minnie, the landlady. Miss Moss describes her as 'cockroach'.
- the milkboy
- the waitress
- the cashier
- Mr Kadgit
- the charwoman
- Mr Clayton, a jester.
- the chorus
- Mr Bithem
- the stout gentleman