Traumatic Experiences in the Selected Stories of Katherine Mansfield

Abstract

The selected stories; ''Fly,'' ''The Woman at the Store,'' ''Daughter of late Colonel,'' and ''The Canary'' vividly depict the traumatic life of Katherine Mansfield after the World War I and the periphery. The people were badly traumatized due to the loss of their near and dear, alienation and scarcity. In the time of Mansfield, the psychological life of the people was trouble. People were attempting to escape from the traumatic life. The memory and obsession had badly haunted them in their life by which their life was unable to run smoothly. The characters of the stories suffer from the loss of their family members and relatives, betrayal, bad memories, alienation and suffering. They try to get out of the bad situation but their suffering does not get over, they cannot get relief from suffering and then they are beset with their traumatic experiences.

The present research on the selected stories attempt to show vivid portrayal of the traumatic experience of Mansfield and the English people in specific. The stories identify war and its destruction and frustrated life where spirituality is defeated in surge of the materialism leading toward the traumatic dread. Here, Mansfield portrays and explores the doomed way of human psyche and the dark side of human life which is reflected in the form of flash backs, nightmares and other repeated phenomena.