Leiden University Student Repository

Koning, Margo de (2021)

The Colonial Exiles of New Zealand: Settler Displacement in Katherine Mansfield's Short Stories

Bachelor thesis | Engelse taal en cultuur (BA)

This thesis offers an explanation of Katherine Mansfield’s sterile depiction of colonial life by employing the postcolonial concept of displacement. It examines four of Mansfield’s New Zealand stories, namely “The Woman at the Store” (1912), “Prelude” (1918), “At the Bay” (1922), and “The Garden Party” (1922), and argues that the characters of the woman at the store, Linda Burnell, Beryl Fairfield and Laura Sheridan are displaced postcolonial subjects in the New Zealand landscape. The thesis also demonstrates that these four stories represent the settler existence as imbued with loneliness, alienation and identity crises, and that the protagonists are unable to lead meaningful lives due to the psychological consequences of displacement.

Katherine Mansfield

New Zealand literature

Short story

Modernism

Displacement

Postcolonial theory

Author

Koning, Margo de

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Literature

Supervisors

Liebregts, P.T.M.G.

ECTS Credits

10

Language

en