Her First Ball

by Katherine Mansfield

A young woman nervously goes to her first ball with her cousins. She had not previously gone to a ball due to living deep in the country, and she goes to the ball with her cousins due to lacking any siblings of her own.

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, Fiction, Literary Fiction, 20th Century, Read For School

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1921

About the author

Kathleen Mansfield Murry (née Beauchamp) was a prominent New Zealand modernist writer of short fiction who wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield.

Katherine Mansfield is widely considered one of the best short story writers of her period. A number of her works, including "Miss Brill", "Prelude", "The Garden Party", "The Doll's House", and later works such as "The Fly", are frequently collected in short story anthologies. Mansfield also proved ahead of her time in her adoration of Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov, and incorporated some of his themes and techniques into her writing.

Katherine Mansfield was part of a "new dawn" in English literature with T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. She was associated with the brilliant group of writers who made the London of the period the centre of the literary world.

Nevertheless, Mansfield was a New Zealand writer - she could not have written as she did had she not gone to live in England and France, but she could not have done her best work if she had not had firm roots in her native land. She used her memories in her writing from the beginning, people, the places, even the colloquial speech of the country form the fabric of much of her best work.

Mansfield's stories were the first of significance in English to be written without a conventional plot. Supplanting the strictly structured plots of her predecessors in the genre (Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells), Mansfield concentrated on one moment, a crisis or a turning point, rather than on a sequence of events. The plot is secondary to mood and characters. The stories are innovative in many other ways. They feature simple things - a doll's house or a charwoman. Her imagery, frequently from nature, flowers, wind and colours, set the scene with which readers can identify easily.

Themes too are universal: human isolation, the questioning of traditional roles of men and women in society, the conflict between love and disillusionment, idealism and reality, beauty and ugliness, joy and suffering, and the inevitability of these paradoxes. Oblique narration (influenced by Chekhov but certainly developed by Mansfield) includes the use of symbolism - the doll's house lamp, the fly, the pear tree - hinting at the hidden layers of meaning. Suggestion and implication replace direct detail.

Reviews

[Chari · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5/5

[madii ੈ✩ ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

a portrait of a young woman's changing perception of the world over the course of a single night, as she attends her first ball. in the story's opening, leila overflows with anticipation, the free indirect discourse capturing the idealistic aspirations of girlhood.

"it seemed to her that she had never known what the night was like before. up till now it had been dark, silent, beautiful very often—oh yes—but mournful somehow. solemn. and now it would never be like that again—it had opened dazzling bright."

yet her naivety and innocence is abruptly snatched by an older man, who exposes the fleeting nature of youth and happiness as they dance together, plunging her into a sobering realisation about the insignificance of her life.

"it sounded terribly true. was this first ball only the beginning of her last ball, after all? at that the music seemed to change; it sounded sad, sad; it rose upon a great sigh. oh, how quickly things changed! why didn’t happiness last for ever? for ever wasn’t a bit too long."

one of the most exciting aspects of mansfield's writing lays in its versatility- the imagery so rich that it means something different to everyone. hearing the various interpretations of this short story understood by the people in my class has been one of the greatest joys of starting my english degree.

overall, i love the language in this, and i love the simplicity in its subject matter- a short but moving portrayal of the shifting thoughts of a lively young girl as she comes of age and learns all about the world.

[Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Young Leila, an only child, living in the country, goes to her first ball with her cousins. She's at that age where women do not read much, unless they are ugly in which case they read a lot but are not invited to balls. So women who review this would either go reminiscing ("I remember when I had my first dance at...") or experience vicariously the youthful innocence and thrill of such experience ("so that was how it must have felt had I been to a ball.."). Me, I'm not a girl and I had not had any balls but my own. The enjoyment I had reading this was when a old, fat man who had attended balls for 30 years already (likely a teacher) took Leila for a dance, correctly guessed that it was her first ball, then engaged her in a conversation where he told her that not too long after that magical night:


"you'll be sitting up there on the stage, looking on, in your nice black black velvet. And these pretty arms will have turned into little short fat ones, and you'll beat time with such a different kind of fan--a black bony one. ...And you'll smile away like the poor old dears up there, and point to your daughter, and tell the elderly lady next to you how some dreadful man tried to kiss her at the club ball. And your heart will ache, ache because no one wants to kiss you now. And you'll say how unpleasant these polished floors are to walk on, how dangerous they are."

[Mack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mansfield's prose in "Her First Ball" dances and sparkles, all the while investigating every feeling of her subject without missing a beat and without an imperfect note.

[Mark André · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cute story. Sensitive and sincere.

[Дмитрий · Rating 4 out of 5]

Прекрасный рассказ. Мэнсфилд всегда удается передать чувства персонажей, многим авторам не мешало бы у нее поучиться.

[Aneeza · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short, sweet tale about a girl called Leila's first ball. Mansfield accurately captures the fluttering of a young girl's heart.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Katherine Mansfield was an author best known for her short stories about ordinary people, which often ask difficult questions. If you have never read anything by her before, this is one of a new series of single stories by her, which offer a great taster of her style and work.

Her First Ball was written in 1921. The story revolves around eighteen year old Leila, the ‘little country cousin,’ who attends her first ever ball with a feeling of great expectation and excitement. Leila is an only child, whose nearest neighbours live fifteen miles away, so she is thrilled to be with her confident cousins, amidst the chaos, crush and noise. However, despite her thrill at attending, she finds others bored by what she finds so exciting... The excitement of youth balanced against the weariness of age of experience is perfectly captured amongst the music, crowds and exuberance of the Bright Young Things.

[Marc Gerstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

A little gem of a story: A country girl attends her first ball as she accompanies her townie cousins. There themes explored here are simple; wide-eyed innocence and excitement regarding a new experience juxtaposed against staleness and cynicism. It’s about as simple as one can get. But the artful way in which it is told is an example of the short story at its best.

[Fiona Bentley-reber · Rating 4 out of 5]

A simple story comes to life through great imagery.

[Kiera Beddes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great account of a young girl attending her first ball. I used this short story in a unit on Coming of Age in a film & literature class.

[#DÏ4B7Ø Chinnamasta-Bhairav]

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To SEE a WORLD in a Grain of Sand,
And a HEAVEN in a Wild Flower,
Hold INFINITY in the palm of your hand
And ETERNITY in an Hour"
~ William Blake ~

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Form is Emptiness; Emptiness is form.
Form is not different than Emptiness;
Emptiness is not different than form
~ Heart Sutra ~

Like the ocean and its waves,
inseparable yet distinct

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" I and The Father are one,
I am The Truth,
The Life and The Path.”

Like a river flowing from its source,
connected and continuous

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Thy kingdom come.
Let the reign of divine
Truth, Life, and Love
be established in me,
and rule out of me all sin;
and may Thy Word
enrich the affections of all mankind

A mighty oak tree standing firm against the storm,
As sunlight scatters the shadows of night
A river nourishing the land it flows through

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[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5 stars*

Written in 1921, this short story revolves around Leila and her first ever ball. Living way out in the countryside she doesn’t really get the chance to attend anything like this, not that she’s bothered, but tonight she’s attending with her cousins who are all quite used to these things. Leila isn’t sure she wants to go at all, however, things go surprisingly well, until someone spoils it for her, and she just longs to be back in the countryside, listening to the baby owls.

[Amanda ♡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Was this first ball only the beginning of her last ball, after
all? At that the music seemed to change; it sounded sad, sad; it rose upon a great sigh.
Oh, how quickly things changed! Why didn't happiness last for ever? For ever wasn't a bit
too long."

[Zachary Raber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining and succinct, as Mansfield is defined by, but the story doesn’t have quite enough runway for her to climb to her usual heights. Because of it’s brevity, it’s worth the read nonetheless, but likely won’t leave much of a mark.

[Carli Pienaar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the story, quite true

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

The excitement of a young girl's first formal dance is almost ruined by the toughtless remarks of an older man.

[Charli Cutajar · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this a lot for a short story

[Vaishali · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a fairy-tale like Cinderella canvas, Mansfield stamps a firm lesson : Never grow old !

[Emma Ghiz]

“Oh, how quickly things change.”

[Bren fall in love with the sea. · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The lights, the azaleas, the dresses, the pink faces, the velvet chairs, all became one beautiful flying wheel."
- Katherine Mansfield, Her First Ball



Enamoring. Lovely. A vision of pinks and yellows and brightly covered rooms where the ball has began!

This story is told from the eyes of a young girl. It is her first ball! And oh has she looked forward to going!

She still has that innocence a lot of us lose as we enter adulthood. She is idealistic. She thinks everyone should be happy all the time and all people should adore the ballroom and the dances which seem like magic to her.

We see all of this through her eyes. And the beauty, the imagery in this story is about as perfect as you can get.

The whole story comes alive in an enamoring tale of radiance, magical dances and one girl's dream.

However there is more to this as the people she meets are NOT all happy to be there. That is because they of course are no longer children and the scars their psyches wear get in the way of such festive ambiance. For them, ball dancing has become routine.

I REALLY encourage people to read this. It's as delicate as a rose in bloom. It will carry you away on an ethereal and lush journey where life is still as delicate and new as one's first snowfall.

And perhaps you too will get swept up in the short but astonishingly vivid journey of a lovely young girl who is able with a smile to touch all around her with the fairy dust of joy.

[☆ megan ☆ · Rating 2 out of 5]

this was a fun book, my english teacher read it to our class and i loved the style.

[Moneeza Rafiq · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tale chock full of imagery and sensual descriptions of a girl's first ball, her shining expectations, and their somewhat deflation.

[Bekah Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think way to much is read into this story, but hey. It wasn't bad.