Bliss, Katherine Mansfield

Groups:

1. Point of View (Bertha Young’s limited perspective) + Irony

2. The “iceberg”/”palimpsest” – the hidden layers of the story, the multiplicity and
synchronicity of voices
3. Symbolism (the pear tree, the cats, the colors, the tomato soup)
4. Desire – the erotic triangle and the dispersal of desire between Henry, Pearl and Bertha
– the dyad of Pearl and Bertha (queer desire)
5. The meaning of “bliss” + Epiphany

Stages:

1. Summary of the text – loose retelling of the plot

2. Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf, two literary friends, rivals, and women “in
love”.
- Virginia was both envious of and enchanted with her Zealander friend who, unlike
Virginia, possessed a more varied experience of the world. Katherine had gone
through several sexual misadventures and had traveled widely, engaging in unlady-
like professions. In fact, Virginia dubbed them the “Chaste & the Unchaste”. But
beyond this, the two believed their spirits were perfectly attuned, Katherine
describing her friend/foe’s mind as having a “strange, trembling, glinting quality”
while also writing to Virginia and telling her that they are “after so very nearly the
same thing”. The two often shared or even stole ideas from each other (Virginia’s
“Kew Gardens” was inspired by a letter from Katherine wherein the young writer
expressed her desire to write a story about movement, music and flowers: “a
conversation set to flowers”) but they also nurtured each other’s talent, reading for
each other, and publishing and supporting each other’s work. Katherine was an
outsider to London’s literary society, lived precariously on a small stipend, and
therefore needed guidance and friendship, while Virginia was a comfortable middle-
class intellectual darling, who already enjoyed appreciation from her Bloomsbury
group, though she suffered her own private ailments and disappointments. These
differences would often wear on Katherine, who envied Virginia’s comforts, but they
wouldn’t weigh more than their deeper literary connection.
- one shocking moment in their friendship came from the writing and publication of
Katherine’s story “Bliss” (1918). Virginia was deeply disturbed and upset by the
story, as she saw herself and Katherine as Pearl and Bertha. Bertha’s very amicable
yet passionless relationship with her husband mirrored Virginia’s marriage to
Leonard, and the inkling of desire for another woman that Bertha covertly expresses
in the story troubled Virginia, since it alluded to her own unspoken inclinations. She
firmly believed Katherine had written the story about them, unearthing their
intimacies to the world. There is a plurality in “Bliss” when it comes to the two
writers’ identities, because Virginia could see herself as Bertha, but she also had a
devious mirror in Pearl. Pearl’s beauty, the tilt of her head, her aloof aura, all matched
Virginia’s, and coincided with Katherine’s description of her in her letters. In a sense,
“Bliss” is a story of a fraught literary affair between the two women, with the
unassuming man as a conduit. The undercurrent of desire is quelled by willful
ignorance, for neither of them wishes to untangle the complicated threads of their
relationship. Katherine is both the young, excitable wife and the worldly mistress (a
child of Empire, but a new breed in London), Virginia is both the naïve, frigid
matron, and the mysterious, inaccessible, sensuous beauty that Katherine wished to
impress and possess. The two opened avenues for each other and made each other
better writers, if not better friends. Virginia would go on to explore her relationship
with women with Vita-Sackville West, but her literary equal and ideal tempestuous
lover would always be Katherine.