Furies on her heels

In a rash moment I decided to take on another Open University Course, mainly because it is my last chance to do one at a price I can just about afford. After this I will be totally priced out of the University, as many others have been, with the huge rise in fees.

So, Twentieth Century Literature and Katherine Mansfield. The name will not be a new one to anyone from New Zealand, but I wonder how many other people know about her. I certainly knew very little when my daughter introduced me to her short stories a few years ago. Then, when we were in New Zealand this year, I managed a visit to the house in Wellington where she was born and which is now a museum dedicated to her life. Fascinating!

When I first read the stories, I was quite bewildered by them but, having re-read them and now having studied them, I find them quite wonderful. I have also read a biography by Claire Tomalin, well worth reading. What an extraordinary woman she was. She was born in New Zealand, but after the age of 19, she spent the rest of her life in London and other European countries. She died at the age of 32. She influenced Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence and others who were writing at the time. Tomalin says - ‘She lived and wrote with the Furies on her heels’ and that is just what it feels like to read about her.

The stories are well worth having a go at. A master of the short story, she wrote about life, mostly from the point of view of women, but in a way no one had done before. She rarely explains things, is often satirical and sometimes you just wonder what is going on. But in the end the stories make you think and often look at things in a completely different way.

So now I am struggling to write an essay about whether/ how she was challenging the status quo . . .

. . . back to it!