Bliss

Katherine Mansfield's "Bliss" was an enormous dud this morning in lit class. Not a surprise--this class had some trouble with Lawrence, and Mansfield approaches the same thematic territory from a Jazz-age sensibility, whereas Lawrence seems more locked in a sort of late-nineteenth century style.

I tried to allow them to explore the story with less coaxing from me, and got dead silence as a reward. So it was back to looking at specific scenes, symbols, and characters: "What do you think is happening here, where Bertha feels a kind of fire burning her when Pearl touches her arm?" "What does it say about Bertha's character that she builds two pyramids out of fruit picked because it accessorizes her rug and tablecloth?" "What about the various symbols: the "creepy" cats, the pear tree, the moon?" Blah-blah, yackety-yack. The monkeys on Mrs. Norman Knight's coat? The name Norman Knight? Meant nothing to them--oh well, at least they got all salacious when we talked about the possibility that Bertha was a repressed lesbian (I don't give it much credence, though the text does try to throw the reader off a bit--I think Bertha is re-connecting to her feminity, that's why she kind of feels a confused love/lust for Pearl--it's not necessarily a sexual attraction, and at any rate Bertha quickly feels the need for a booty call with hubby Harry). But the story is supremely vague and interestingly silly; of course it's got depth too, which is why after five readings I'm not sure what to make of it.