Katherine Mansfield, Postimpressionist

Abstract

Abstract:On "Woolf's literary impressionism," Ann Banfield asserts, "Katherine Mansfield was the decisive influence yet exemplified Impressionism's limits" ("Time Passes" 471) Mansfield never achieved "a post-impressionist 'modern fiction,'" not even in "Prelude" or "At the Bay." But Banfield overlooks Mansfield's elaboration of an alternative postimpressionism that consists not in Woolfian design in which moments are crystallized and kaleidoscopically arranged, but rather in visions of an incipient, preternatural motility. Mansfield's postimpressionism, less formally complex than Woolf's, is more metaphysical. Its most vibrant instance lies within the tidal pool in "At the Bay," a tidal pool taken over, stilled, and solemnized by Woolf for the beach-combing scene in To the Lighthouse.