A slice of life
What are the advantages of drawing on your own life in your fiction? Helen Walters examines the pros and cons via a classic short story by Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Mansfield
VISIT https://writ.rs/thedollshouse
TO READ THE STORY
Like many of Katherine Mansfield’s stories, ‘The Doll’s House’ addresses class and societal divisions; something she will have been well aware of due to her upbringing in one of the most influential families in Wellington, New Zealand. Some of her stories reflect her childhood years in Wellington, while others were inspired by time spent in Europe later in her, sadly all too short, life. As always, you’ll get the most out of this masterclass if you read the story yourself: https://writ.rs/thedollshouse.
The narrative style of the story is interesting. It is told in third person omniscient, with the multiple viewpoints meaning we get to see the story from different perspectives. There is also a narrative voice not tethered to any particular character, which Katherine Mansfield uses to draw the reader’s attention to certain attitudes and opinions. This is the voice that tells us that being a washerwoman is ‘awful’, that it was ‘impossible’ not to laugh at the Kelveys, and many more snide asides. You’ll notice that characters are introduced into the story in a casual way as though the reader might already know them. This may in fact be the case if the reader is familiar with some of Katherine Mansfield’s other stories as she does sometimes use characters in more than one story. It works well as a technique for helping the reader feel they are entering straight into the world of the story without preamble.