The Geographical Setting Of Katherine Mansfield's Two...

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Nick Bitzas ENGL 388: Literature of Australia and New Zealand Professor: Sujaya Dhanvantari Topic Number 2. February 7, 2013 The “Colonized” Wife

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The geographical settings for Katherine Mansfield’s two short stories “Frau

Brechemacher Attends a Wedding” and “The Woman at the Store,” are Germany and New Zealand respectively and what both countries have in common is that they had colonized Samoa. The subject of colonization, which Germany and New Zealand symbolize, in their political relationship with Samoa, is a theme that preoccupies Mansfield’s two short stories. The nature of colonization in these two stories, however, is not political, but domestic. The subject of the “colonized” female is a fact that Mansfield divulges immediately through the stories two titles. Even though Herr Brechemacher and Frau Brechemacher both attend the same wedding, the story’s title only punctuates the presence of Frau Brechemacher at the nuptials. The sense that Mansfield portrays through the story’s title is that Frau Brechemacher’s life is regimented to a strict routine, and now in a covertly biting tone Mansfield reveals, through the story’s title, that the Frau is going to sidestep her daily routine and attend a wedding. In other words it is an unusual event in the life of the Frau to attend a social event, like a wedding, since her prescribed role as a woman confines her within the domestic sphere where she is slave to her children and husband. The exclusion of Herr Brechemacher from the story’s title indicates that the Herr is accustomed to attending social events, and to punctuate his attendance at a wedding is not necessary since he is not circumventing the routines of his daily

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life. In the title “The Woman at the Store” as in “Frau Brechemacher Attends a Wedding,” both female characters are nameless. The Frau has adopted the name of her husband, and the woman in “The Woman at the Store” is without a name and therefore just like the Frau, not a recognized individual. The title “The Woman at the Store” also creates a sense of immobility as if the woman at the store is an eternal fixture within her environment from which she is incapable of escaping. In other words the woman is at the store and can be nowhere else. The similarities between both woman, as indicated by the titles of the stories, is that both women are nameless, constricted to their prescribed female roles, and confined within their environments. However, even though both woman are subjugated and their individualities hindered, their tendencies for self-expression have not been completely eradicated. An instance when Frau Brechemacher has an impulse for genuine self-expression is when the narrator comments on the Frau’s behaviour during her attendance at the wedding: “She watched the couples going round and round; she forgot her five babies and her man and felt almost like a girl again” (7). The Frau’s nostalgia for girlhood and unweddedness indicates an impulse for personal freedom when martial responsibilities had not yet confined her to a domestic prison. During the wedding when Herr Brechemacher presents the bride with the coffee-pot that contains “a baby’s bottle and two little cradles holding china dolls” (7), everybody laughs except the Frau. Everybody’s laughter signifies an unspoken agreement about the symbolism of the domestic items; the items indicate that the biologically predetermined sphere of women is domesticity. The Frau who refrains from laughing does not participate in the

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symbolic consensus of the items since she is aware that she has a selfhood that extends beyond the boundaries of her socially formulated role. At the end of the story, the Frau says, “Na, what is it all for?” and “Always the same...all over the world the same...” (8). Her exasperation demonstrates the futility of her life and women’s lives in general around the world, which indicates that she is aware that she

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