Katherine Mansfield’s Kezia always makes me SMILE!!! Whenever she appears in a story I want to stand up and applaud her instinctive kindness, courage and resourcefulness too. She lives in a family probably not unlike that of Katherine Mansfield herself and the three New Zealand stories in which she is so strongly featured, ( Prelude, At The Bay and The Doll’s House) communicate Mansfield’s ironic nostalgia for a world she as a young adult, chose to leave behind her forever. Yet, as with so many of us, that which we choose to leave behind haunts us and from a creative point of view, such a leaving of her home land fed Katherine Mansfield’s inspiration for her writing until she died of TB in France at 34.
The Doll’s House is a perfect story. It describes the various effects of a special gift of a doll’s house made to the Burnell children by a slightly patronised family friend: ‘dear old Mrs Hay’ upon the immediate community of chidlren and adults. This gift of the doll’s house is proudly ‘shared’ by the Burnell children with all their school friends and colleagues – with the notable exception of the two Kelvey children whose poverty and ‘inferior’ class, excludes them from the seductive power of such a communal ‘viewing’. However this selective and excluding viewing is resisted by Kezia who has noticed a special ‘lamp’ within the doll’s House that she thinks makes teh dolls’ house special. The eldest Burnell, the quasi- adult figure of Isabel (who seems to parody her Aunt Beryl’s snobbishness) fails to even notice the lamp and this we believe reveals her unimaginative and ungenerous spirit.
” But what Kezia liked more than anything, what she liked frightfully, was the lamp…But the lamp was perfect. It seemed to smile at Kezia, to say,’I live here.’ The lamp was real.”
Kezia is a child on the brink of change. She recognises authenticity and can intuitively discriminate between falsity and truth. Here the lamp stands out from the inauthenticty and ‘stiffness’ of the ‘adult dolls’ . It declares its integrity and spiritual presence to Kezia.
However we worry that Kezia will remain isolatedwithin her conventionallly minded and petty family and colleagues. Our worries about Kezia’s isolation are assauged by her act of kindness to the ostracized Kelvey children. Kezia wants to share the magic of the doll’s house and lamp with the Kelveys and her character is shown when she defies the orders of her Aunt Beryl and invites the Kelvey sisters to view the house too. Notably it is the youngest, moast silent Kelvey child who notices the power and magic of the lamp. And this recognition forms the maigcal epiphany of the story- notice here too how Kezia chooses to swing ‘out’ with the gate. A brilliant image of Katherine Mansfield that powerfuly testfies to Kezia’s originality and integrity.
‘ Kezia clambered back on the gate; she made up her mind; she swung out.’
Thresholds are always so revealing. Metaphors work most powerfully when they show no sign of their workmanship! Nothing clunky or ‘clever’ here. ‘she swung out.’ And I always APPLAUD!
‘I seen the little lamp,’ she said softly.
Then both were silent once more.
The smallest Kelvey knows what Kezia knows. Intuition transcends pettiness and a spiritual connection is acknowledged with a beautiful simplicity. Nothing overwritten or forced here!
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great review, it really helped with my report.
9 thumbs up
🙂
Since the three Burnell family stories are at least somewhat autobiographical, one wonders if Kezia does not represent Mansfield herself. Or perhaps a version of herself that she would have wished to be. Either way, Kezia is clearly her favorite character in the these three stories and invested with good moral sense beyond her years..