Katherine Mansfield and French Philosophy: A Bergsonian Reading of Maata

Abstract

For several years from 1910, the French philosopher Henri Bergson was influential and popular in the UK as well as in France. Katherine Mansfield was one of the many writers working in Britain at that time who was inspired by Bergson. This paper aims to explore how she attempted to express her interpretations of Bergson's theory. In doing so, it offers a new reading of Mansfield's uncompleted ‘novel’ Maata, which has not attracted much critical attention to date. In Maata, Mansfield represents two phases of duration which Bergson discusses, that is, continuity and heterogeneity, by describing characters who are waiting to change. Although Mansfield failed in her attempt to complete a longer work of fiction, it could be said that in Maata, she did not fail to present her Bergsonian idea of duration, which was to remain as one of the key concepts in her later stories.