The performative Katherine Mansfield

This thesis looks at the role of performance in Katherine Mansfield’s life and its influence on her writing technique. It argues that there is a consistent thread of active engagement with performance throughout Mansfield’s life which profoundly influenced the content, construction and technique of her writing. It is divided into three chapters. The first examines Mansfield’s early years and the cultural context of colonial, Victorian Wellington and its performance culture as well as the familial and educational influences that surrounded her. The second chapter explores her later cultural context in London in the first decade after the turn of the century. The importance of popular culture such as music hall is examined, and Mansfield’s professional and personal performance experience is defined. The third chapter involves a close reading and analysis of Mansfield’s dramatic techniques through the examination of the stories as well as her use of theatrical imagery, motifs, allusions and plot details.