Katherine Mansfield’s “Bliss”: A Portrait of the Bourgeoisie

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. In a letter to John Middleton Murry of 28 February 1918, Mansfield noted the real-life origin of “Bliss”: “I have enjoyed writing it. […] You will ‘recognise’ some of the people. Eddie of course is a fish out of the Garsington pond (which gives me a joy) and Harry is touched upon W. L. G[eorge]. Miss Fulton is ‘my own invention’” (Letters II 98).2. Mansfield, with her colonial nouveau riche background, developed an ambiguous friendship with the elite circles. For a detailed account, see Tomalin, 149–59 passim.3. Katherine Mansfield, Bliss and Other Stories (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), 95–96; hereafter cited parenthetically in the text.4. Alpers deems Harry “a sort of stock stockbroker” (274).5. My argument in this section is indebted to Veblen.6. Original emphasis. Dilworth points out that the italics in the conversation denote an “extreme upper-class accent” (145).