Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield is a writer we seldom hear of today but she was much anthologized back in the 60s. I came across one of her stories Her First Ball as I'm poking around in a very old pb anthology great modern European stories. The editors wisely pair her story w chekhov's great The Kiss - both about an insecure outsider who has an epiphanic moment at a dress ball chekhov's from the male pov and Mansfield from the pov of a young woman 18 who's lived in the English countryside and is going to her first dress ball w her much more sophisticated city cousins. After some initial excellent and succinct description of the excitement and nervous energy of the event m sets the dance in motions. The central char Leila dances shyly w the first two men making awkward conversation about the floor - is this the way all conversations must begin she wonders - and the in the 3rd dance w an embittered and overweight 40ish man things change - he noted nastily that by the times she's his age she'll be sitting on the stage w the parents her youth and beauty gone - Leila is devastated by this cruelty but for a moment only. M leaves us w a vision of her dancing and bumping into the cruel man and not even recognizing him but of course we recognize the sorrowful accuracy of his cruel words - and his isolation as well. M apparently died at about 35 and had written many stories but I guess Bcz there's no one great novel we don't pay much attention today to her works. That too is sorrowful.

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