Katherine Mansfield's "Bliss": "The Rare Fiddle" as emblem of the political and sexual alienation of woman

Papers on Language and Literature, Summer 1999 by D'Arcy, Chantal Cornut-Gentille

Beneath the material prosperity, the emotional fulfillment, the sense of contentment conveyed by the tale, Mansfield has, therefore, made space for a radical political charge against women's social alienation at the turn of the century.

In discussing how short story critics can escape their own reductive formulae, Head takes issue with Julio Cortazar's metaphor for story composition as "modelling a sphere out of clay" (qtd. in Head 21 ) by arguing that unlike a clay figure, the short story can never be a finished product-for all its apparent formal unity. Since the "plasticity" of a short story cannot be frozen, fastened, or moored in any way, it will always have the power to exude "the unforeseen within fore-seen parameters"(qtd. in Head 21 ) . Similarly,John Bayley's suggestive consideration that a good short story "must seem both formally to preclude, and secretly to accept, speculation on matters excluded by itself" (qtd. in Head 22) offers the possibility of viewing Mansfield's political indictment as underscored by a daring subtextual questioning of Bertha's sexual bliss.

In his clinical rendering of hysterical disorders, Freud explains that neurotic symptoms are the product of an unresolved conflict between unconscious impulses and conscious ones. As a result of his analytic work, Freud was able to suggest that hysteria is caused either by unconscious and very deeply repressed material or because another unconscious thought lies concealed behind the supervalent thought (an excessively intense thought) . In this second case, the relation between the two thoughts is, he goes on to explain, ". . . often achieved by means of an excessive reinforcement of the thought contrary (my italics) to the one which is to be repressed" (88-90) . In other words, the thought which asserts itself in consciousness keeps the objectionable one under repression by means of surplus intensity. This fragment of analysis into the workings of the mind proves crucial for a deeper understanding of Bertha's mental state. As my "political" reading has shown, Bertha's buoyant demonstrations of bliss throughout the story could be no more than a way of concealing from herself the fact that she is miserable, isolated, and alienated-a shadow of a person. On the other hand, her constant and cheerfully ignorant misrepresentations of reality could also evidence or even confirm her repression of a more objectionable truth, for Freud clearly states that the causes of hysterical disorders are to be found in the intimacies of the patients' psychosexual life, in their most secret and repressed sexual wishes (35-36). For this reason, as Freud quite plainly asserts, however immature the patient may be (Bertha's childish nature could be recalled here): "where hysteria is found there can no longer be any question of `innocence of mind"' (83).

From this vantage point, Bertha's bliss is a "supervalent train of thought" which, as the story goes, seemingly centers on her awakening of sexual desire for her husband and her contemplation of a fully committed sexual relationship with him: