Bliss, Absolute Bliss
First up in my independent study is Katherine Mansfield, whom you should totally Wiki, but only after reading “Bliss,” which is free here.
“Bliss” contains one of the first and best modern party scenes. To me it feels far more contemporary than it is (ninety-two years old), and it’s some of the most beautiful writing in English:
ALTHOUGH Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at–nothing–at nothing, simply.
What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly by a feeling of bliss–absolute bliss!—as though you’d suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe? …
Oh, is there no way you can express it without being “drunk and disorderly” ? How idiotic civilisation is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?
“No, that about the fiddle is not quite what I mean,” she thought, running up the steps and feeling in her bag for the key–she’d forgotten it, as usual–and rattling the letter-box. “It’s not what I mean, because—Thank you, Mary”—she went into the hall. “Is nurse back?”
“Yes, M’m.”
“And has the fruit come?”
“Yes, M’m. Everything’s come.”
The cadences of the first three paragraphs are perfectly blended with Bertha’s mood. You could substitute different words and the sentence structure would still be ecstatic. At the same time, we’re getting a lot of information: Bertha’s age, the time of day, a good guess at the time of year and her social class (rich) and occupation (none).
The really interesting thing is the shift in perspective. The first paragraph is told by a narrator—a not-Betha. It sort of describes a scene, but it could also be general illustrations of things Bertha would like to do, if the single word “this,” didn’t alert us that we’re in a particular moment. The second paragraph is reported thought—Bertha’s sentiments, but not in quotes; an impression of her thinking. Then in the third and fourth paragraphs, we come in for a landing; we’re out of narration into a scene. Mansfield could have told us “Bertha took dancing steps on and off the pavement.” That would be accurate; but would it make us feel blissful? Instead of grounding emotions in physical detail, Mansfield grounds physical reality in Bertha’s emotion (which is also central to the story as events unfold).
Alice Munro must have read Mansfield assiduously; she uses similar shifts in and out of characters’ perspectives to marvelous effect.
I love this story to pieces. And that’s my scholarly judgment. To pieces.
