The Canary By katherine mansfield

I must confess that there does seem to me something sad in life. It is hard to say what it is. I don't mean the sorrow that we all know, like illness and poverty and death. No, it is something different. It is there, deep down, deep down, part of one, like one's breathing. However hard I work and tire myself I have only to stop to know it is there, waiting. I often wonder if everybody feels the same. One can never know. But isn't it extraordinary that under his sweet, joyful little singing it was just this—sadness ?—Ah, what is it ?—that I heard.

what is modern literary ?

Biography

Modernist spoke of the inner self and consciousness. Instead of progress, the Modernist writer saw a decline of civilization. Instead of new technology, the Modernist writer saw cold machinery and increased capitalism, which alienated the individual and led to loneliness.

Thank You

Any Question

1- Modernism works are all about exploding the minute into the vast. and one of Katherine Mansfield's short fiction elements is the amplification of the small moment into one of universal significance.

2- she can take a seemingly uncomplicated item and transform it into something that extends both to the social status of a character while also commenting on the larger issues associated with class.

Her Work

3- she invite the reader to associate with the narrator not just as a strategy to explore the otherness of characters, but also to comment upon the elevated self-esteem of the protagonist as well

Name : Katherine Mansfield

Date of Birth : 14 October 1888 , New zealand

her death : 9 January 1923 , France (Aged 34)

Nationality : New Zealand

Literary Movement : Modernism

- The Doll House

The main Theme

- The Fly

Loneliness and Alienation

- She was part of a " New Dawn" in English literature with T S Elliot , James Joyce and Virginia Woolf

- She was a part of a briliant group of writters who made london the center of the literary world.

Her Style of Writing

- She used Her memories in her writing { People, Places , Fabric }

- she concentrate on one moment, a turning point rather than a sequence of events.

- The Garden Party

“ It surprises even me now to remember how he

and I shared each other's lives.”

“I loved him. How I loved him! Perhaps it does not a matter so very much what it is one loves in this world.

But love something one must!”

- Her imagery are often from nature, flowers , wind , colors which readers can identify easily

Her contribution to modernism

- Prelude

The Characters

- The plot is secondary to mood and characters.

The woman

lonely ( the protagonist)

maybe she is a house wife

House “when I'd finished the house in the afternoon, and changed by blouse and brought my sewing on the verandah here”

Cook “Drops of water were scattered all over the kitchen”

the chinese man who sold her the canary

Washerwoman

“the Chinaman who came to the door with birds to sell held him up in his tiny cage”

“ My washerwoman used to say every Monday when she wondered why I didn't keep 'a nice fox terrier”

contribution to the genre of the short story

three young man

• “Of course there were my three young men who came in to supper every evening”
• “while I got my three young men their breakfasts”

three youg men

The Canary

- she brought appreciation of the crucial role of gender to the modernist table.

Main symbol

A lonely woman tells of her dead canary, how it was the only thing she loved, 'perfect company'.

- presenting narrative fiction through male eyes and according to male values

The Canary

- generally wrote using third- person narrative

Happiness

Joy

Beauty

The analysis

- Mansfield used symbolism.

- Her stories are a triumph of style.

- Mansfield shared the determination of others, such as Woolf and Joycem to devolop new ways of eeing and describing.

Point of View : ( First Person Narrative )

- First person narrator

- Anonymous

- Interior monologue

"It is hard to say what it is. I don't mean the sorrow that we all know, like illness and poverty and death"

The Canary By Katherine Mansfield