Katherine Mansfield and the Fantastic

Book excerpt: Fantastic and Gothic readings of Mansfield's short stories present us with a covert, darker world, alongside seemingly familiar actions and eventsThis volume investigates an unexpectedly rich vein of literary gothic motifs and tropes found within Mansfield's modernist, experimental prose. The essays investigate her development of the fairytale in several stories discloses how the 'Cinderella' story underpins 'Her First Ball', how 'Little Red Riding Hood' lurks beneath 'The Little Governess', and how the figure of the changeling inhabits 'A Suburban Fairy Tale'. Mansfield's explorations of the conscious and unconscious mind are elucidated through a discussion of Freud's theory of the uncanny and the unsettling effects of language in Mansfield's In A German Pension stories. Finally, the term 'charm' is revealed as spanning the two extremes of the fantastic and the ordinary which combine in Mansfield's evocations of the enchantment of domestic interiors.