THE INTERRELATEDNESS OF CHARACTER AND NATURE IN KATHERINE MANSFIELD’S “PRELUDE”

Öz Katherine Mansfield’s contribution to the development of short story genre is related to her use of nature imagery, through which the characters are revealed. Many of her stories use the garden as setting and dwell on the difference between the outer and inner space, focusing specifically on the experience of female characters. In her short story “Prelude”, which recounts the story of the Burnell family’s move from town to a new house with a garden in the country, Mansfield emphasizes the interrelatedness of character and nature. Through the juxtaposition of wild nature with nature created by human beings, particularly the garden and the aloe tree in this story, she shows the inner states of her characters as well as the different relationships between the individual and the place s/he lives in. Ecofeminism, which correlates issues of nature and environment to the situation of women, emphasizes that characters cannot be thought in isolation from their physical surroundings. Hence, in this paper I will analyze Mansfield’s story “Prelude” from an ecofeminist perspective by highlighting the analogy between nature/woman and culture/man to show how the writer puts more emphasis on the former of the dualisms through the valorization of women and nature.

Anahtar Kelimeler:

Katherine Mansfield, “Prelude”, ecofeminism, nature/culture, male/female

PDF

___

Armbruster, K. (1998). Speaking for Nature. In Patrick D. Murphy (Ed.), Literature of Nature. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. Dada-Büchel, M. (1998). Katherine Mansfield’s Dual Vision: Concepts of Duality and Unity in Her Fictional Work. Zürich: Die Deutsche Bibliothek. Dickson, K. M. (1998). Katherine Mansfield’s New Zealand Stories. New York: University Press of America. Fullbrook, K. (1986). Katherine Mansfield. Brighton: The Harvester Press. Glotfelty, C. & Fromm, H. (Eds.). (1996). The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Georgia: The University of Georgia Press. Gunsteren, J. V. (1990). Katherine Mansfield and Literary Impressionism. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Hartmann, S. B. (2006). Feminist and Postcolonial Perspectives on Ecocriticism in a Canadian Context. In Catrin Gersdorf & Sylvia Mayer (Eds.), Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies: Transatlantic Conversations on Ecocritisim. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Howarth, W. (2000). Ecocriticism in Context. In Laurence Coupe (Ed.). The Green Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. Kaplan, S. J. (1991). Katherine Mansfield and the Origins of Modernist Fiction. New York: Cornell University Press. Kern, R. (2003). Ecocriticism: What is it good for? In Michael P. Branch & Scott Slovic (Eds.). The ISLE Reader Ecocriticism, 1993-2003. New York: University of Georgia Press. Kurth-Schai, R. (1997). Ecofeminism and Children. In Karen J. Warren (Ed.). Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Magalaner, M. (1971). The Fiction of Katherine Mansfield. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Mansfield, K. (1981). The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield. London: Penguin Group. McRae, J. (Ed.). (2000). Katherine Mandfield: The Garden Party and Other Stories. London: Penguin Books. Nathan, R. B. (1988). Katherine Mansfield. New York: The Contnuum Publishing Company. Oppermann, S. (1999). Ecocritisim: Natural World in the Literary Viewfinder. Hacettepe University Journal of the Faculty of Letters, 16(2), 29-46. Peach, L. J. (Ed.). (1998). Women in Culture. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Ronning, A. H. (1989). Katherine Mansfield, British or New Zealander-The Influence of Setting on Narrative Structure and Theme. In Paulette Michel & Michel Dupuis (Eds.). The Fine Instrument. Sydney: Dangaroo Press. Warren, K. J. (1997). Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.