Feminist

Feminist movements in the United States were started with the intent of fighting the injustices that arose, defending an ideology that women have an equal role in society, and entitled to the same rights as men. There have been three waves of the feminist movement in the United States. The first wave began at the end of the 20th century (1890’s) up till the early 21st century (1920’s) and it was a movement characterized by the women’s suffrage movement that ended with some success.

The third wave of the feminist movement had started towards the end of the 1980s with differentiation from the second wave focusing on improving from the flaws and mistakes that had arisen in the second wave and finding their definition. The second wave of the feminist movement began to gain momentum in the 1950s, after World War II, with the women being forced out of the workplace, and came to an end in the mid-1980s.

The second wave of the feminist movement came to its end after splintering due mainly to two points, the failure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and the continued growth of criticism that the movement focused on white women excluding minority women (DailyHistory). Novels are valuable for more than just their feminist rhetoric; they are a testament to how a cultural movement can be further cultivated by and more fully understood through the impact of the writing of the time. This paper will observe and analyze some of the literature that moved and changed the second wave of the feminist movement.

First a brief outline of the second wave feminist movement. The second wave had begun in the late 1950s and had come to an end in the late 1970s or early 1980s. The second wave of feminism started with the dissatisfaction of women being forced out of the workplace with the return of the men from overseas, after the end of World War Two (DailyHistory). In the early 1950s and 1960s with the country being stabilized the ideas and discontent with social norms, movements began to form. Literature and politics in the 1960s had helped the movement and made more people take notice of them.

The feminist saw their victories through the legalization of abortion, the Equal Pay Acts of 1963, and the introduction of the pill, these victories gave the movement momentum in the 1970s and saw improvements to the rate of women finishing their education and women entering the workforce. Second-wave feminism had finally dissolved under the harsh criticisms that the movement had focused on white women to the exclusion of all the other women, the minorities. The movement saw its end when they failed to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in 1983.

During the 1940s there was an influx of women entering the workforce due to the Second World War, the influx had been caused by the men heading overseas to fight. As the war ended many women had already entered the workforce and had gained work benefits, such as maternity leave, daycare, and counseling, but as the men returned those women had lost their work. Yet women began to feel the injustice of lost and unequal pay (DailyHistory).

After World War II, literature saw some changes to how women were perceived, writers began to question ‘how women in society were perceived and the role they played,’ particularly as the war (WWII) had shown women made valuable contributions and, in many cases, performed tasks equally to men. In 1949, Simone de Beauvoir published The Second Sex a novel that questioned the views and roles thrusted on women by society and explored the role of male dominance that played in continuing this patriarch (Beauvoir). Felstiner in her article “Seeing ‘The Second Sex’ through the Second Wave” explains that Beauvoir wrote The Second Sex in the hopes of finding the answers to the questions that plague feminists even to this day have not been abated.

The Second Sex had a unique structure to it for Beauvoir choose to explore the structure of women in society into two volumes the first being the ‘Facts and Myths’ behind women and the second volume being the ‘Lived Experience’ and within each volume were parts in volume one it went Destiny, focusing on the biological, phycological, and physiological views on women, the second part was the History, focused on the history of women’s role in society from nomadic to present times (1940’s), and the third/final part of volume one was the Myths, exploring the myths and legends of women such as a comparison of Eve and the Virgin Mary to Pandora and Athena and the difference in an image that is portrayed. In volume two there are four parts which break down as a cycle, a phase in a women’s life and as she progresses what society expects of her.

Part one is the Formative Years, how she grows into a woman, part two is the Situation, the roles in which women are expected to play in society and the expectations of each role, part three is the Justifications, what places the women within their role and how society and women should view their places within society, and the final part right before the Conclusion is about the movement Towards Liberation, on how women are independent beings. (Beauvoir).

The book broke down and verbalized the questions on why women should play into man’s hands and why a woman should have to be subservient to men’s whims and made a call for liberation and change. Beauvoir though did not join in the feminist movement for the “females to rise to the same heights as men but to release from the ideas of gender and open a path for equality for everyone, where gender plays no role in politics or society.” (Felstiner).

In the latter half of the 20th century, we see a change in literature there begins to be a rise in female protagonists. In the 1960s many science fiction novels explored the idea of a society that had no gender politics, or reversal of gender roles (Fleming). With the rise in feminism, it was time to explore alternate paths and see how society could change. While some aspects of literature seemed to yet remain such as the fact that a woman either marries, is a spinster, or dies in some way, usually her hand or in protecting those she loves, there is an increase in the female protagonist working and living more of a ‘male’ role.

Women are no longer being portrayed as the obedient sweetheart of a damsel, but women of mind and action (Short). The late 1960s brought the arrival of female writers became a component spokesperson for the science fiction genre, with the arrival of Ursula Le Guin, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and a couple of others (Short). This proponent is important because this genre allowed female voices to be heard, so they may envision their own futures.

The science fiction genre tends to have two sides that a writer will fall into, they will either create a utopia or a dystopia. In the case of feminists thee utopian writers could rise above the current patriarch and view a future where there is sexual equality and freedom to be what they desired, as for the feminist dystopian writers they could reveal the doom and despair that awaited if there was no change to the patriarch, showing how repressive things could become in their manifestations (Zaman).

One of the most important writers during this period is undoubtedly Betty Friedan and her book The Feminine Mystique, a novel that had been published in 1963 is a dystopian account of suburban life in the 1950s and 60s. the feminine mystique is much more than that is “a challenge to dependent wives to trade domestic self- abnegation for a more fulfilling version of
the American dream; and above all, an eminently readable text.” (Turk).

Friedan book begins by covering “the problem that has no name” an issue that many suburban wives have come across time and time again, in a time where the economy is stable and their husbands have steady work, they are faced with this issue, and Friedan had no issue naming and dissecting it, “If a woman had a problem in the 1950’s and 1960’s, she knew that something must be wrong with her marriage, or with herself,” Friedan wrote the narrative from the basis of the women she interviewed and her own experiences within that role. As Turk helpfully summarized:

”The advances of science, the development of labor-saving appliances, the development of the suburbs: all had come together to offer women in the 1950s a life their mothers had scarcely dreamed of, free from rampant disease, onerous drudgery, noxious city streets. But the green lawns and big corner lots were isolating, the housework seemed to expand to fill the time available, and polio and smallpox were replaced by depression and alcoholism. All that was covered up in a kitchen conspiracy of denial.”

Friedan began writing The Feminine Mystique after surveying some of Smith graduates. The survey convinced her that many of the educated middle-class women were living unsatisfactory lives and it prompted her to pursue years of additional research. (Alexander). Betty Friedan forced her readers to question the injustices women faced daily, in a term she defined as the “feminine mystique”: “the body of culture, professional opinions, and institutions that instructed women who were dissatisfied with their feminine roles to seek solace in ever more femininity”. (Turk).

The Feminine Mystique urged women to take a step back and observe the constructs that built and social environments and the opportunities for them to claim their “full humanity”. A point that assisted in moving the feminist movement was that Friedan had decided to take and active role within the movement, like when she had been one of the forces behind the Women’s Strike for Equality in 1970 and again for the first year anniversary after that strike (Lichtenstein).

Six to seven years after the publication of The Feminine Mystique, (1969-1970) came another major book in feminist theory, Sexual Politics by Kate Millett. Kate Millett wrote Sexual Politics about the patriarchal structure of society that controls sex, sexual expression, and ultimately politics and the narrative of political discourse (Millett).

Millett went about that by documenting the subjugation of women in literature and art, but she doesn’t stop there the book goes on to explore literature’s patriarchal myths and their extension into psychology, philosophy, and politics. Stimpson said it quite eloquently “Finally you (Millett) offered a reading of history, a reading of the past 160 years in England and the United States, where you saw a sexual revolution beginning, becoming sexual reform, and then beginning of a counterrevolution.”

The book had an easy read and in just the first few passages alone the reader feels the disgust of the men’s actions and pain for the woman, Millett does not hesitate to bring out the dark actions and frames the mind in “us against them” setting. In the book she even clearly states that “Because of our social circumstances, male and female are really two cultures and their life experiences are utterly different— and this is crucial.

Implicit in all the gender identity development which takes place through childhood is the sum total of the parents’, the peers’, and the culture’s notions of what is appropriate to each gender by way of temperament, character, interests, status, worth, gesture, and expression…”(Millett, p31) and continuing on about the patriarch of society, this is important because it does not use platitudes and soft words to soften the blow but airs it for all to see, and for feminists a clear statement on the need for change. When the book came out the feminist movement (or women’s liberation movement as it was called during the time) had held its first mass demonstration, the one the Friedan was a part of, and so was Kate Millet, after releasing her book (Simons).  The book had help ensure that the fire remained lite and added the kindling needed to wake more people to the issues women are constantly facing in society.

Sex and gender oppression are common because of political discourse found in society. The second wave of feminism had worked to try and fight such oppression, with some success. As Millets argued “that before any other type of oppression existed, elite men first oppressed people based on sex and gender, extending later to race and class.” (Turk). Women saw this every day but the books had been the shout that caught many peoples attention, for each piece of literature told a tale of women being pushed back down, and some visualized a future free of such concerns, free of the patriarchal oppression.

The 1960s had some victories for the emerging second wave women’s movement, and though it ended sadly the second wave did open many doors for women. Some of the successes the second wave had was the establishment of the National Organization for Women (NOW), which Friedan joined, and a great legislative victory for feminists, the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (DailyHistory), prohibiting the discrimination of wages on the account of sex by employers engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce (U.S Equal). Each piece of literature expresses an idea, a call for change, above are just a few of such that called for women’s liberation and equality.

References

• Alexander, Ruth M. “In Defense of Nature: Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson, and Betty Friedan.”
• Journal of Women’s History, vol. 31 no. 3, 2019, p. 78-101. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/jowh.2019.0028. Accessed 10 Apr. 2020.
• Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany
• Chevallier, PDF eISBN: 978-0-307-81453-1, VInetage Books, 2010, https://uberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1949_simone-de-beauvoir-the-second-sex.pdf. Accessed 10 Apr. 2020.
• Felstiner, Mary Lowenthal. “Seeing ‘The Second Sex’ through the Second Wave.” Feminist
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• Fleming, Erica. “to Find Out what was Left”: Science Fiction Literature as a Response to the
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• Harnois, Catherine. “Re-Presenting Feminisms: Past, Present, and Future.” NWSA Journal, vol.
  20, no. 1, 2008, pp. 120–145. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40071255. Accessed 10 Apr. 2020.
• Lichtenstein, Grace. “Feminist Protest March Due Thursday.” The New York Times, 22 Aug.
  1971, p. 47, https://www.nytimes.com/1971/08/22/archives/feminist-protest-march-due-thursday.html?searchResultPosition=43. Accessed 10 Apr. 2020.
• Millett, Kate. “Full Text of ‘Sexual Politics (1970)”.” Internet Archive, UNIVERSITY OF
• ILLINOIS PRESS Urbana and Chicago, archive.org/stream/KateMillettSexualPolitics/Kate Millett–Sexual Politics_djvu.txt. Accessed 10 Apr. 2020.
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• Generations.” American Sociological Review, vol. 68, no. 4, 2003, pp. 607–622. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1519741. Accessed 10 Apr. 2020.
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  vol. 5, no. 2, 1979, pp. 384–401. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3177603. Accessed 10 Apr. 2020.
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• Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 3/4, 1991, pp. 30–40. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40003299. Accessed 10 Apr. 2020.
  “The Equal Pay Act of 1963.” U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,
  www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/epa.cfm. Accessed 10 Apr. 2020.
• Turk, Katherine. “‘To Fulfill an Ambition of [Her] Own’: Work, Class, and Identity in The
• Feminine Mystique.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol. 36, no. 2, 2015, pp. 25–32. EBSCOhost, doi:10.5250/fronjwomestud.36.2.0025. Accessed 10 Apr. 2020.
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• Zaman, Sobia. The Feminist Appropriation of Dystopia: A Study of Atwood, Elgin, Fairbairns,
  and Tepper, University of Manitoba (Canada), Ann Arbor, 1995. ProQuest, https://searchproquestcom.ezproxy2.library.colostate.edu/docview/304256520?accountid=10223. Accessed 10 Apr. 2020.

Women have been suffering since the beginning of the history because of patriarchal order. Feminism is a clash of women against patriarchy. Suffering of women created the concept of feminism as a gender based political and social movement. In public and private sphere, women have been facing economic, political, cultural, legal, administrative and social inequalities. This problem directly hits the order of the society. (Zembat, 2017)

According to Harrison and Boyd, it is an obvious point that half of humanity has always been women, obvious, that is, until one considers how few women appear on lists of ‘great people’ who have shaped the course of human history. As some feminists describe it History as ‘His-story’ is that of men and their doings.

Women, if they appear at all, do so as a support for men, or as suffering the consequences of war and disaster. Rarely, they appear as rulers in their own right, often characterized by male historians as endowed with particular viciousness and ruthlessness, qualities common in men but ‘unseemly’ in women.

Feminism is one of the most recent ideologies to emerge, although its origins can be traced far back into history. In Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics which was written by Gloria Jean Watkins or better known by her pen name bell hooks which was published in 2000 shares her simple definition of feminism. “Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression”.

According to Dr. Susan Currie Sivek, “Feminism is a movement that seeks equality for people of any gender. It is founded on the belief that people should be able to pursue any opportunity and demonstrate any characteristic regardless of gender.” Her definition of feminism means that both men and women can be feminists. Feminism is in favor of equality between genders, not dominance of women over men.

As stated by Pasque and Wimmer in “An Introduction: Feminist Perspectives”, which was developed by them, Feminism is a complex notion that has vast differences in meaning and connotation for people pning generations, ethnic identities, sexual orientations, social classes, nationality, and myriad identities. It is not a static notion; rather it evolves with us throughout our lives and is shaped by the various lenses we use to view the world at large and, most importantly, ourselves.

While in different dictionaries, feminism is defined as the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes. It is the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men. It is also a range of social movements, political movements, and ideologies that share a common goal which is to define, establish, and achieve the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. This is the belief that women should be allowed the same rights, power, and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way.

Feminist on the other hand, is a person who believes and supports feminism or the belief that women should have the same rights and opportunities as men and tries to achieve change that helps women to get equal opportunities and treatment. A feminist is someone who supports equal rights for women. If someone objects strongly to women being paid less than men for doing the same job, he’s probably a feminist.

If you believe that women should have the same political, social, and economic rights as men, you are a feminist. It has absolutely nothing to do with putting down men or boys in order to elevate the status of women. The word feminist comes from feminism, which originally meant simply “being feminine,” or “being a woman,” but gained the meaning “advocacy of women’s rights” in the late 1800s.

“Femin-” comes from the Latin root word “femina,” meaning woman. “-ism” is a suffix derived from the Greek word “ισμός” or “ismós” that turns the preceding noun into a verb, implying a belief, practice, or worldview. The first recorded use of the word in English was 1851, but at that time it just meant “the state of being feminine.” Then, in 1837, French philosopher and utopian socialist Charles Fourier coined the word “féminisme” to mean advocacy of women’s rights.

It is called feminism and not equalism or humanism even if it’s pro-equality because historically, “feminism” the idea and “feminism” the word rose in popularity together during the U.S. women’s suffrage movement of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, which was focused on getting women the right to vote. Since this was a problem only hurting women, the name made sense. As time has gone on, the goals have evolved but the name has stuck.

Mary Wollstonecraft is best known for her literary piece, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” in 1792, in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason. This Theory of Feminism believes that women are as capable and as rightly entitled as men and which is hereby abolished the beliefs that women are weaker than men.

All in all, feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Feminism is mainly focused on women’s issues, but because feminism seeks gender equality, some feminists argue that men’s liberation is therefore a necessary part of feminism, and that men are also harmed by sexism and gender roles.

Feminist theory exists in a variety of disciplines, emerging from these feminist movements and including general theories about the origins of inequality, and, in some cases, about the social construction of sex and gender. It is the extension of feminism into theoretical or philosophical discourse and it also aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women’s and men’s social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist politics in a variety of fields.

Feminist criticism is a form of literary criticism that is based on feminist theories. It is broadly explained as the politics of feminism and uses feminist principles to critique the male-dominated literature. The cause of this type of criticism lies in the oppression of women in social, political, economic and psychological literature.

Women have been ignored or mostly considered secondary in the literature for a long time. The feminist criticism aims to view them in a different perspective and discover the women’s contribution to the history of literature. It also aims to reinterpret the old texts and establishing the importance of women’s writing to save them from being lost or ignored in the male-dominated world.

Feminist theory also looks for the possibilities and ways to remove the inherent sexism as a practice of writing from the mainstream literature. Apart from this, the goal of feminist criticism is to bring awareness about the sexual politics and analyses the writings of women writers from the feminist perspective. It also includes the language and style of writing to determine the relationship between the genders in terms of the power.

Feminist criticism draws attention to “…the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women” (Tyson 83). This theory displays male domination in society as well as targets to uncover women discrimination in literary works about women, which can have external and internal forms.

Feminist criticism is also affiliated with less undeniable forms of disempowerment such as the exclusion of female writers from the traditional literary system: “…unless the critical or historical point of view is feminist, there is a tendency to underrepresent the contribution of women writers” (Tyson 84).

Notwithstanding a variety of approaches exist in feminist criticism, there are some areas of society. The following list is quoted from Tyson (92):

1. Women are persecuted by men from economic, political, social, and psychological point of view.

2. In every aspect of life where male dominate, female are the opposite: they are diminished, determined only with their inequality from male standards and values.

3. The Anglo-European civilization is dramatically connected to patriarchal ideology, for example, the depiction of Eve in the Bible as the primary source of sin and death in the world.

4. Whilst biological science defines our sex (male or female), culture determines our masculinity and femininity.

5. The feminist movement, involving feminist theory and literary criticism, has a fundamental aim to modify the world by proclamation of the gender equality.

6. Gender matters affects every aspect of human production and experience as well as the literature production and experience, either we are conscious of these matters or not.

Switching to people who “gave a birth” to the feminism, Queen Victoria is considered as the ‘’Icon of the Victorian Age and Feminism’’ (Stagl, Farhnberger 2016). According to some theorists feminism is divided into three waves of feminism. The first wave is defined from late 1700s to early 1900’s, the second one is specified during early 1960s-late 1970s and the third – started in 1990s and continues to the present time.

As Katherine Mansfield is the modernist of the first feminist wave period, only the first wave should be described in detail. The most talked-about feminists of the first wave like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull had a hand in the women’s suffrage movement, as a result it led to National Universal Suffrage in 1920 as well as put on airs the Nineteenth Amendment. Accordingly, this amendment granted women the right to vote.

Katherine Mansfield’s experiences growing up in colonial New Zealand heightened her understanding of modern life tensions. She was born in 1888 in Wellington, a town considered as “the empire city” by its european inhabitants, who represented themselves as city’s bourgeois class. In her childhood Mansfield saw the separation between the colonial and the native, or Maori, as well as their lifestyle, caused her to criticize the treatment of the Maoris in several diary entries and short stories during next two decades.

Mansfield’s biographer, Angela Smith, wrote: “It was her childhood experience of living in a society where one way of life was imposed on another, and did not quite fit in” that put an edge on her modernist notion to emphasize moments of “disruption” or confrontations with “strange or disturbing” aspects of life.

Her notion of separation was underlined when she arrived in Britain in 1903 to study at Queen’s College. Mansfield remained a lifelong outsider as well as a traveller between two obviously similar but extremely different worlds at the same time. After her return to New Zealand in 1906, later she came back to Europe in 1908, being living and writing in England and parts of continental Europe. Before her early death from tuberculosis at the age of 34, Mansfield lived in Europe, having a Bohemian and unconventional lifestyle.

Mansfield presents the moment of epiphany in her literary works to disprove them and reveal the prohibition and violence they contain. Katherine’s stories “Garden Party” and “Bliss” dramatize the transformation and inversion of bourgeois lifestyle and domestic harmony. While she tends to exhibit a certain devotion to these standard aesthetic forms, K. Mansfield moderately interrogates many of these conventions in a noticeably modernist way.

Mansfield creates an obviously beautiful or common image, such as the happy family in “Bliss” or “Garden Party” and then gradually challenges it through a sophisticated counter-narrative. Consequently, her arrangement of modernist techniques is less pronounced than that of James Joyce and other modernists. Just as she challenges aesthetic understanding, Mansfield resolves the reader’s ideas about her own stories by presenting a seemingly beautiful, distinct narration that is obsessed by tensions as well as obscurity.

Modernism is widely recognized as perhaps the most important and influential artistic-cultural phenomenon of the twentieth century, either it is mainly considered as a movement, a period, a genre, a style or an ideology. Subsequently the modernist short story, as an important ‘invention’ of modernist writers as well as its main characteristics and features of interest. Katherine Mansfield, one of the great Modernist innovators in English literature, plays a central role in this regard. (Joetze 2010)

Within the framework of science, psychology, philosophy and literary modernism is essentially characterised by the word “uncertainty”. According to social science Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engels’ “The German Ideology” gives comprehension of the community level so plays a significant role. Consequently, the key feature – our thoughts and behaviour are not spontaneous but suggested by a complex and unconscious system of values and beliefs by those in power.

The father of modern psychology Sigmund Freud analyzed the influence of the unconscious mind on our daily life. As a result, the unconscious became significant for modernist writers as a subject as well as motivation for many uncommon stylistic experiments. Marx’s, Engels’ and Freud’s work developed the perception that humans are not fully controlled by unconscious and social, political or economic forces in their personal lives and relationships.

Modernist authors may be acclaimed by more conservative writers with structure and style renovations. Accordingly, formal innovations are influenced by a broaden use of symbolism and stylistic devices to display the individual approach and consciousness. The improvement of literary tactics like the internal monologue, the stream of consciousness, presenting inner thoughts with the chaotic proximity of their actual appearance, or the innovative mindstyle at the start of the twentieth century. (Joetze 2010)

There exists an opinion that the change of the specifically British modernist short story may be dated at 1878, when Lionel Stevenson published “A Lodging for the Night”. It is also claimed that the symbolist movement gave the significant impulse to the development of the short story in the 1890s. H. G. Wells called this period “the Golden Age” of the short story in England. The main goal of modernist short story was focused by writers on technique and form instead of just on content.

Katherine Mansfield, real name Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp (October 14, 1888 — January 9, 1923), New Zealand-born English master of the short story, who evolved a distinctive prose style with many overtones of poetry. Her delicate stories, which addresses psychological conflicts, have an indirectness of narration and a delicacy of observation that uncovers the influence of Anton Chekhov. Nevertheless K. Mansfield herself had much influence on the development of the short story as a form of literature (Britannica).

After her education (in Wellington and London), at the age of 19 Katherine Mansfield left New Zealand to determine herself in England as a writer. Her first disillusion appeared in the black humour stories collected in In a German Pension (1911). She has been published stories in Rhythm and The Blue Review until 1914, which were edited by the critic and essayist John Middleton Murry, whom she married in 1918 after her divorce from George Bowden.

The death of her soldier brother in 1915 shocked her into a realization that she entitled a sacred debt to him and the remembered places of her home country. A series of short stories beautifully evocative of her family memories of New Zealand with others, were collected in Bliss (1920), which guaranteed her reputation and was conventional to her art.

During the next two years Mansfield had been writing her best literary works, doing her best in The Garden Party (1922) including “At the Bay”, “The Voyage”, “The Stranger” and the classic “Daughters of the Late Colonel”. The last five years of her life were ‘clouded’ by the disease. Her final work was published post-mortem in The Dove’s Nest (1923) and Something Childish (1924).

Her husband Murry edited the Journal (1927, rev. ed. 1954), and also published annotations to her letters to him (1928, rev. ed. 1951). Her letters were edited by Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott (1984–2008); Scott also edited Mansfield’s notebooks (1997).

Mansfield’s publication of Bliss in 1920 guaranteed her reputation as a writer’s and made her social life opened to Europe’s literary elite. Most of her work was left unpublished until her death and later her husband took charge of her finished works and set to publishing her remaining short stories, letters and journals. Mansfield’s legacy as one of the most productive short story modernists in the twentieth century up to nowadays.

From 1910 publications in periodic publications like the New Age Mansfield was recognized as innovative, psychologically important as well as one of the avant-garde pioneers in the short story creation. Her language was clear and precise, her emotions and reactions to experience were carefully selected and accurate. Her themes were numerous: the difficulties and uncertainties of families and sexuality as well as the fragility and vulnerability of relationships including the complexities and insensitivities of the rising middle classes and the social consequences of war.

Indeed, the tendency to give her writings a biographical reading was actively pursued by her partner John Middleton Murry, an individual who was responsible for publishing much of her diary entries following her death and who was famously accused by the fellow modernist D.H. Lawrence of effectively seeking to publish Mansfield’s “waste paper basket” (Mansfield 2002: 3).

The publication of Mansfield’s journals and notebooks, together with the relatively young age at which she died, means that her writing is often understood to be the expression of a certain kind of youthful rebellion, one that necessarily draws inspiration from Mansfield’s own relationships and unconventional lifestyle.

Taking all the aforesaid into consideration, Mansfield has persistently been praised for the restriction and avoidance of her literary works as well as for her ability to pack complex emotion and transform into the untruthfully simple and direct outlines in her stories. Her works are still considered as a model of the particularly English modern short story and the change of the literary focus itself.