Marriage à la mode - Katherine Mansfield (1921)

Résumé du document

Introduction: “I feel that indifference is really foreign to my nature and that to live in a state of it is to live in the only Hell I really appreciate,” wrote Katherine Mansfield in a letter written to Murry in Paris. The indifference is a major theme in “Marriage à la mode”. This short story deals with the question of couple, isolation, egoism, shift, and the difficulty to understand the other. William works all week long in London, and spends weekends with his wife, Isabel, and his children, Paddy and Johnny, in the countryside. William's love for his wife is pure, but Isabel is distant and more and more indifferent to the marital life. She prefers to spend her time with her bohemian friends (some artists, painters and poets), as if she was outside the limits of the real world. William misses the woman Isabel was formerly, and decides to send her a love letter.

Extraits

[...] The mimetic discourse conveys Isabel's emotions (“her feeling of astonishment”), by using aposiopesis, self-questioning, and exclamations. A seemingly chaotic narrative voice, which tries and convey Isabel's thoughts and emotions, while the language (used by all of the characters) is truly absurd: in this extract, the lines of the characters are meaningless. II. A moment of sudden meaning (Virginia Woolf's “Moments of beings”) A. An unexpected experience of awareness Suddenly, Isabel seems to become aware of her fault. She refuses to give Bobby the letter. The distance she placed between her and the letter is abolished. [...]

[...] Metatextual dimension: one of Isabel's friend wants to use the letter for his next book. Confusion between reality and fiction. The letter is seen as some kind of flamboyant piece of literature, and not as an expression of suffering. What is noticeable is that the letter already is the point of K. Mansfield's short story. By spreading some extracts in the text, the narrator plays with the frustration of the reader, who only knows the letter through the characters' words. “Pages and pages there were”: absence of interest from the narrator. [...]

[...] The indifference is a major theme in “Marriage à la mode”. This short story deals with the question of couple, isolation, egoism, shift, and the difficulty to understand the other. William works all week long in London, and spends weekends with his wife, Isabel, and his children, Paddy and Johnny, in the countryside. William's love for his wife is pure, but Isabel is distant and more and more indifferent to the marital life. She prefers to spend her time with her bohemian friends (some artists, painters and poets), as if she was outside the limits of the real world. [...]

[...] Accumulation of brief lines, comprising many interjections: “Oh Oh Oh ”, “Sh Sh Sh ”. The reader doesn't know who is speaking. Overreaction of her friends. Burlesque. Cacophony. They act as the absurd simulacrum of an ancient chorus. “Ha, ha, ha Oh dear ” Isabel's laughter is cathartic. She doesn't really know how to react to the letter. At first, she needs to discredit her husband's words. Repetition of the word “Absurd”. Laughter helps to deal with this uncomfortable situation, by placing emotion at a distance. [...]

[...] She is not able to resist the call of her friends and their influence. The failure of marriage: misunderstanding of both spouses. Whereas he loves her, William doesn't understand the desire of Isabel and is blind to her unhappiness. Prolepsis of the divorce: “I always thought those letters in divorce cases were made up”: underlines the clear-sightedness of her friends. They have noticed the degradation of Isabel's marriage. But it seems to have no importance. “I'll – I'll go with them”: use of dash and Isabel's stuttering reveals her emotional disorder and her powerlessness. [...]