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The Doves' Nest: and other stories
The Doves' Nest and Other Stories is a 1923 collection of short stories by the writer Katherine Mansfield, published by her husband John Middleton Murry after her death. The volume contains all the complete stories, and several fragments of stories, which she wrote at the same time as, or after, those published in The Garden Party, including "The Doll's House", "Honeymoon", "A Cup of Tea" and others.
162 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1930
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About the author
Katherine Mansfield
976 books1,204 followersKathleen 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
July 5, 2019
Twenty one stories only six of which are finished. Her husband got lots of flak for publishing these stories after her death. (There's even a 1980s film starring John Gielgud lambasting him.) He published everything he could find, including her journal and youthful poems, and the royalties enabled him to buy a nice country house. All wasn't bliss for him though. He married his housekeeper who enjoyed hitting and haranguing him after marrying a young girl who worshipped Katherine and also died of TB. However, I'm glad he published all her writing instead of burning it as she, ambiguously, instructed. (It's still hard to forgive his namesake for burning Byron's memoirs.)
There's probably only one story here that ranks amongst her best, The Fly. Brilliant how much complex psychology she plumbs from one ostensibly mundane moment. Some of these stories were written when she was so ill she could barely walk so it's unfair perhaps to expect the kind of brilliance she reached in her very best work. The Dove's Nest was conceived as a novel but too little of it survives to get a feel of what she was aiming at. Otherwise, there's a sense of her not quite finding the inspiration to see any of her ideas through. Towards the end of her life she was determined to find a new form for her writing, as was the case with Virginia Woolf after Night and Day. Unfortunately, we'll never know to what degree she might have succeeded.
There's probably only one story here that ranks amongst her best, The Fly. Brilliant how much complex psychology she plumbs from one ostensibly mundane moment. Some of these stories were written when she was so ill she could barely walk so it's unfair perhaps to expect the kind of brilliance she reached in her very best work. The Dove's Nest was conceived as a novel but too little of it survives to get a feel of what she was aiming at. Otherwise, there's a sense of her not quite finding the inspiration to see any of her ideas through. Towards the end of her life she was determined to find a new form for her writing, as was the case with Virginia Woolf after Night and Day. Unfortunately, we'll never know to what degree she might have succeeded.
November 25, 2022
Written in Katherine Mansfield’s mature years, this collection includes some of her most exquisite stories, quiet little gems. On the other hand, she was at the time also struggling with the TB that would claim her life prematurely. Reading the stories feels somewhat like looking over her shoulder as she writes, pausing to consider the next phrase.
The stories do not really “go” anywhere; whatever happens is almost entirely internal to the emotional lives of her characters, people who are marginalized in some way, perhaps due in part to their own tendencies. They often seem to be unfinished, at odds with their surroundings. In terms of their attitudes and their speech patterns, the people are inescapably British (i.e. either English or colonial) even when the episodes take place abroad. They take their Englishry with them wherever they go. That brand of class consciousness unique to the English also comes into play, generating a peculiar kind of dramatic tension and often driving what little plot may exist.
There is about the stories a ‘work-in-progress’ atmosphere, seemingly unfinished, like the characters themselves. There’s a pervasive sense of loss, that what we are experiencing is what remains after what might have been failed to reach fruition.
The stories do not really “go” anywhere; whatever happens is almost entirely internal to the emotional lives of her characters, people who are marginalized in some way, perhaps due in part to their own tendencies. They often seem to be unfinished, at odds with their surroundings. In terms of their attitudes and their speech patterns, the people are inescapably British (i.e. either English or colonial) even when the episodes take place abroad. They take their Englishry with them wherever they go. That brand of class consciousness unique to the English also comes into play, generating a peculiar kind of dramatic tension and often driving what little plot may exist.
There is about the stories a ‘work-in-progress’ atmosphere, seemingly unfinished, like the characters themselves. There’s a pervasive sense of loss, that what we are experiencing is what remains after what might have been failed to reach fruition.
April 19, 2020
Apart from the title story and a few others, these are all unfinished fragments, some more complete than others. I'm not usually a fan of the publication of every last word from a writer's notebooks but this is not a usual case. Mansfield was a master of short stories and I'm grateful to have the chance to read these drafts. It may be because I've read a lot of her work recently but her style is still apparent to me, even in the briefest of extracts, her use of foreshadowing for instance and her amazingly personal prose. As someone who longs to write well but who struggles with the mechanics I appreciate being able to read Mansfield's work; it feels pleasurable and instructive at the same time.
July 29, 2016
These are delicious little morsels, but the fact that the majority are unfinished is quite frustrating. I would have liked to see where the title story went, for example, or "A Married Man's Story", both of which offered tantalizing little feelers and then just stopped.
June 20, 2024
Dessa noveller (6 st 'färdiga' och 15 st 'fragment') gavs ut postumt, alltså efter Katherine Mansfields död. Hon började planera samlingen genast efter 'Garden-Party-samlingen'. Och titelnovellen skulle vara huvudnumret, antagligen ganska lång, för den är lång, men blev ändå aldrig färdig. Hon slutade i det närmaste att skriva, skrivkramp p.g.a. djup självkritik. Hon strävade efter allt större 'äkthet', och blev aldrig nöjd. Samtidigt tycks hon har tvekat över sysslan som helhet, hon vill hellre 'leva', sitt eget liv - inte bara registrera andras.
Det går naturligtvis inte att betygsätta 'fragment', pågående arbeten, som ännu har mycket kvar för att fulländas. Vi vet antagligen inte heller om de sex noveller som ansågs 'färdiga', skulle ha kommit med i hennes eget urval. Men eftersom jag redan läst alla hennes i övrigt utgivna noveller, ville jag även läsa dessa. Eftersom 75 procent är fragment på bara 3-5 tättskrivna sidor, som snarast är idé-utkast, än noveller i vanlig mening - så tar det en hel del arbete, innan de kan anta Mansfields färdiga mästerskap. Läsandet blir mer en tankelek, vad sökte författaren efter?
Samlingen inleds med "The Doll's House", från Nya Zealand, med samma tre systrar, som i den långa novellen 'Prelude' i Bliss-samlingen (1920), den är återigen en perfekt barndomsskildring. Även övriga noveller och fragment är huvudsakligen inriktade på medkänsla, inte ironiska elakheter. I två talas det om sorg efter söner som dött i första världskriget. Ett fragment talar också om 'slang' ord som uppstått under kriget, sättet att prata om personer som man blir besviken på buntas ihop som hunner, tyskar och bolsjeviker. Men det mesta handlar om att komma in under huden på olika människors känslor, och medelåldern har stigit betydligt i denna sista samling, trots att Katherine Mansfield själv ännu inte hunnit fylla 35 år när hon dog.
Det går naturligtvis inte att betygsätta 'fragment', pågående arbeten, som ännu har mycket kvar för att fulländas. Vi vet antagligen inte heller om de sex noveller som ansågs 'färdiga', skulle ha kommit med i hennes eget urval. Men eftersom jag redan läst alla hennes i övrigt utgivna noveller, ville jag även läsa dessa. Eftersom 75 procent är fragment på bara 3-5 tättskrivna sidor, som snarast är idé-utkast, än noveller i vanlig mening - så tar det en hel del arbete, innan de kan anta Mansfields färdiga mästerskap. Läsandet blir mer en tankelek, vad sökte författaren efter?
Samlingen inleds med "The Doll's House", från Nya Zealand, med samma tre systrar, som i den långa novellen 'Prelude' i Bliss-samlingen (1920), den är återigen en perfekt barndomsskildring. Även övriga noveller och fragment är huvudsakligen inriktade på medkänsla, inte ironiska elakheter. I två talas det om sorg efter söner som dött i första världskriget. Ett fragment talar också om 'slang' ord som uppstått under kriget, sättet att prata om personer som man blir besviken på buntas ihop som hunner, tyskar och bolsjeviker. Men det mesta handlar om att komma in under huden på olika människors känslor, och medelåldern har stigit betydligt i denna sista samling, trots att Katherine Mansfield själv ännu inte hunnit fylla 35 år när hon dog.
Read
May 5, 2017From the very beginning, I’d like to say, this is the greatest story I’ve ever read. Honestly. "The Canary" by Katherine Mansfield is the last story that Mansfield completed. This story is about a woman who had nobody, except her favourite bird – the Canary. She loved the Canary very much, especially she liked his singing. She even always talked to him. She imagined that the canary always responded her talks.
In the past she had focused her spiritual yearnings on the nightly appearance of a star but she has transferred these feelings onto the bird as soon as it was acquired.
She looks after three men as lodgers, and views the bird as a male companion. She is aware that the lodgers view her with disdain, but finds comfort in the presence of the bird.
Even when she feels existentially threatened by a bad dream and a dark night, she feels the bird’s chirping as a comforting presence.
Now that the bird has died she becomes absolutely lonely, feels emptiness and grief in her life.
I like this story very much. It is a simple story about an older woman and the most important thing in her life - her pet Canary. I like it because the author tells us not just a pet of this old woman, but he tells about the Canary as the best friend of woman. And it was no wonder that the woman didn't want love anybody as much as this bird. There is a great relationship between the bird and the old woman in “The Canary.
In the past she had focused her spiritual yearnings on the nightly appearance of a star but she has transferred these feelings onto the bird as soon as it was acquired.
She looks after three men as lodgers, and views the bird as a male companion. She is aware that the lodgers view her with disdain, but finds comfort in the presence of the bird.
Even when she feels existentially threatened by a bad dream and a dark night, she feels the bird’s chirping as a comforting presence.
Now that the bird has died she becomes absolutely lonely, feels emptiness and grief in her life.
I like this story very much. It is a simple story about an older woman and the most important thing in her life - her pet Canary. I like it because the author tells us not just a pet of this old woman, but he tells about the Canary as the best friend of woman. And it was no wonder that the woman didn't want love anybody as much as this bird. There is a great relationship between the bird and the old woman in “The Canary.
Read
July 25, 2016"The Doll's House" is one of the cutest short stories I've ever read, you can enjoy it here.
May 6, 2022
These are mostly just fragments of stories, but even so one can see how wonderful her style was. She could bring you wholly into her world in 3 or 4 words.
April 3, 2025
Perhaps it does not matter very much what it is one loves in this world. But love something one must.
I've never truly understood the power of short stories until I read this book. Mansfield's style of letting events describe themselves, of putting words to unnameable feelings, not by naming them but immortalizing them in these stories, is hauntingly beautiful. It's so simple, the way she questions what a certain element of life means and then answers herself with, "It's not too easy to say but there you are!" There's something so incredibly comforting in knowing that every deep-seated emotion you've ever had, another person has felt it too. It's solidarity across a century.
The two stories that will likely stay with me the longest are The Canary and Weak Heart. I doubt there is much I could say for the Canary that hasn't already been said, being one of Mansfield's more popular stories, but the passage about the inherent sadness in life is something that struck such an immense chord with me. It should be depressing, but instead I've never felt more soothed knowing that I'm not the only one who feels there's something broken inside me because no matter what I do, no matter how productive, how happy, how social... deep down the well inside me is always somewhat hollow and sad.
"It is there, deep down, deep down, part of one, like one's breathing. However hard I work and tire myself. I have only to stop to know it is there, waiting."
Somehow, having it expressed, so simply like that, makes the experience so intimately human that it moves it from a constant dread to a connecting thread to community. We can all be a little kinder, knowing that inside, we are all a little hurting. It also reminds me of a Katherine Mansfield quote: "You mustn't think that I'm dreadfully sad. Yes, I am, but you know, at the back of it is absolute faith and love." This quote, in the context of The Canary, makes it clear how sincerely the message of the story is to encourage hope. Behind the sweet, joyful canary's song is a deep sorrow, yet it sings. Yet, it creates happiness. Is happiness. Its mark on this world, its memory, is one of comfort and joy.
...Ah, if life must pass so quickly, why is the breath of these flowers so sweet?
In the same thread, Weak Heart was so impactful because it connects to the juxtaposition between impermanence and the vitality of life. Despite being unfinished, what is written tells the story of a girl whose life is heard so vividly through her piano music. She is nervous about much of the world, so she hides in her music. But in her attempts to hide, she is seen. While the ending is tragic, as with all her stories, it isn't exactly a full tragedy. Edie made the flowers irresistibly sweeter through her music, she fell in love, she lived. She may not realize how much of life she took up, but she did. And it's impossible not to find a certain solace in that. It's almost ironic that Mansfield herself never got to finish this story and thought it wasn't good enough. Yes, it is unfinished and unpolished, but the life within it is undeniable. Everything done in life is worth doing.
I've never truly understood the power of short stories until I read this book. Mansfield's style of letting events describe themselves, of putting words to unnameable feelings, not by naming them but immortalizing them in these stories, is hauntingly beautiful. It's so simple, the way she questions what a certain element of life means and then answers herself with, "It's not too easy to say but there you are!" There's something so incredibly comforting in knowing that every deep-seated emotion you've ever had, another person has felt it too. It's solidarity across a century.
The two stories that will likely stay with me the longest are The Canary and Weak Heart. I doubt there is much I could say for the Canary that hasn't already been said, being one of Mansfield's more popular stories, but the passage about the inherent sadness in life is something that struck such an immense chord with me. It should be depressing, but instead I've never felt more soothed knowing that I'm not the only one who feels there's something broken inside me because no matter what I do, no matter how productive, how happy, how social... deep down the well inside me is always somewhat hollow and sad.
"It is there, deep down, deep down, part of one, like one's breathing. However hard I work and tire myself. I have only to stop to know it is there, waiting."
Somehow, having it expressed, so simply like that, makes the experience so intimately human that it moves it from a constant dread to a connecting thread to community. We can all be a little kinder, knowing that inside, we are all a little hurting. It also reminds me of a Katherine Mansfield quote: "You mustn't think that I'm dreadfully sad. Yes, I am, but you know, at the back of it is absolute faith and love." This quote, in the context of The Canary, makes it clear how sincerely the message of the story is to encourage hope. Behind the sweet, joyful canary's song is a deep sorrow, yet it sings. Yet, it creates happiness. Is happiness. Its mark on this world, its memory, is one of comfort and joy.
...Ah, if life must pass so quickly, why is the breath of these flowers so sweet?
In the same thread, Weak Heart was so impactful because it connects to the juxtaposition between impermanence and the vitality of life. Despite being unfinished, what is written tells the story of a girl whose life is heard so vividly through her piano music. She is nervous about much of the world, so she hides in her music. But in her attempts to hide, she is seen. While the ending is tragic, as with all her stories, it isn't exactly a full tragedy. Edie made the flowers irresistibly sweeter through her music, she fell in love, she lived. She may not realize how much of life she took up, but she did. And it's impossible not to find a certain solace in that. It's almost ironic that Mansfield herself never got to finish this story and thought it wasn't good enough. Yes, it is unfinished and unpolished, but the life within it is undeniable. Everything done in life is worth doing.
November 16, 2025
Katherine Mansfield’s The Dove’s Nest and Other Stories feels like the final breath of a brilliant mind—unfinished, luminous, delicate, and marked with the quiet ache of mortality.
Published after her death, these stories reveal Mansfield at her most experimental and emotionally incisive. They do not have the polished completeness of The Garden Party, but they possess something even more compelling: a raw, trembling sense of transition.
What makes Mansfield singular—something you as a literary stylist will appreciate deeply—is her ability to turn the everyday into a revelation.
Her stories are like finely tuned musical pieces in which the smallest emotional vibration becomes audible. A gesture, a glance, a half-finished sentence—these micro-moments carry the entire gravitational weight of a character’s inner world.
In The Dove’s Nest, Mansfield frequently inhabits liminal spaces: adolescence, travel, illness, longing, and the intimate discomforts of social gatherings.
Many stories feel like fragments of consciousness rather than structured plots, and this is intentional. Mansfield understood the modernist insight that stories do not need events; they need perception.
What makes the collection profoundly moving is the shadow of Mansfield’s own illness.
The stories radiate a yearning for life, beauty, and connection—yet they are tinged with the knowledge of impending finitude. This duality sharpens her observational powers.
She sees everything: the fragility of relationships, the absurdity of social posturing, and the loneliness that hides beneath cheerful interactions.
Mansfield’s characters often live in emotional dissonance. They crave intimacy but fear exposure; they dream but remain tethered to mundane obligations.
Her women, particularly, are written with a clarity that feels decades ahead of her time—sensitive to societal constrictions yet insistently interior, rich with desire and contradiction.
The prose is extraordinary. Mansfield writes sentences that feel like brushstrokes—light, precise, and luminous. She has a musician’s sense of rhythm; her paragraphs breathe. Even in stories left incomplete, her voice is unmistakably confident.
One of the interesting things about reading this posthumous collection is watching Mansfield push against the boundaries of her earlier style. She becomes more daring, more elliptical, more psychologically fragmented. You sense a writer evolving rapidly, almost urgently, as though time were running out.
For readers today, The Dove’s Nest offers not merely literary pleasure but historical insight. It captures the cusp of literary modernism, where Victorian clarity dissolves into impressionistic nuance. Mansfield stands with Joyce, Woolf, and Lawrence—not in imitation but in parallel evolution.
Ultimately, the collection is a testament to a life interrupted but not diminished. Mansfield’s voice, even in its unfinished state, feels alive—more alive, perhaps, than writers who completed far more.
And for a reader with sensitivity to tone, mood, and psychological detail, these stories offer an intimate encounter with one of literature’s most delicate and most enduring spirits.
Published after her death, these stories reveal Mansfield at her most experimental and emotionally incisive. They do not have the polished completeness of The Garden Party, but they possess something even more compelling: a raw, trembling sense of transition.
What makes Mansfield singular—something you as a literary stylist will appreciate deeply—is her ability to turn the everyday into a revelation.
Her stories are like finely tuned musical pieces in which the smallest emotional vibration becomes audible. A gesture, a glance, a half-finished sentence—these micro-moments carry the entire gravitational weight of a character’s inner world.
In The Dove’s Nest, Mansfield frequently inhabits liminal spaces: adolescence, travel, illness, longing, and the intimate discomforts of social gatherings.
Many stories feel like fragments of consciousness rather than structured plots, and this is intentional. Mansfield understood the modernist insight that stories do not need events; they need perception.
What makes the collection profoundly moving is the shadow of Mansfield’s own illness.
The stories radiate a yearning for life, beauty, and connection—yet they are tinged with the knowledge of impending finitude. This duality sharpens her observational powers.
She sees everything: the fragility of relationships, the absurdity of social posturing, and the loneliness that hides beneath cheerful interactions.
Mansfield’s characters often live in emotional dissonance. They crave intimacy but fear exposure; they dream but remain tethered to mundane obligations.
Her women, particularly, are written with a clarity that feels decades ahead of her time—sensitive to societal constrictions yet insistently interior, rich with desire and contradiction.
The prose is extraordinary. Mansfield writes sentences that feel like brushstrokes—light, precise, and luminous. She has a musician’s sense of rhythm; her paragraphs breathe. Even in stories left incomplete, her voice is unmistakably confident.
One of the interesting things about reading this posthumous collection is watching Mansfield push against the boundaries of her earlier style. She becomes more daring, more elliptical, more psychologically fragmented. You sense a writer evolving rapidly, almost urgently, as though time were running out.
For readers today, The Dove’s Nest offers not merely literary pleasure but historical insight. It captures the cusp of literary modernism, where Victorian clarity dissolves into impressionistic nuance. Mansfield stands with Joyce, Woolf, and Lawrence—not in imitation but in parallel evolution.
Ultimately, the collection is a testament to a life interrupted but not diminished. Mansfield’s voice, even in its unfinished state, feels alive—more alive, perhaps, than writers who completed far more.
And for a reader with sensitivity to tone, mood, and psychological detail, these stories offer an intimate encounter with one of literature’s most delicate and most enduring spirits.
June 4, 2017
«The Canary» is the first Mansfield’s novel that I have read and, unfortunately, one of the last novels of the author. This story is very impressive – sometimes it seems that Mansfield forgets she doesn’t describe only HER feelings and thoughts. But it has played right into her hands – after reading the novel the narrator provides us food for thought.
«The Canary» is written in first-person, so the reader can see what is going on in the text through the personal narrator’s (and the main character’s) perception. The reader feels the narrator’s dejection in the first sentences, lines, words. It is all about the nail and a cage, which has to be there. But there is no cage and the canary, who is a special part of the main character’s life.
The Canary is not a martyr in a cage. He was beloved. Everything was unique in this bird – the voice, the look, the demeanour . And neither flowers in the garden nor the evening star can pay the narrator’s attention or even replace the canary after his death. The narrator do loves the bird and will never love anyone else. She just doesn’t want to leave the perfect image of the canary, the only who lifted her mood, understood her. The strength of the stroke is too big, and, in the end, the main character relapses into a melancholy apathy.
«The Canary» is not only about the dreadfully sad love for the bird and the narrator’s flow of feelings and sensations. The one main mean of expressiveness, which the author is used, is her style. All abstracts, which start with an ellipsis, are used to show the main character’s bitter flashbacks to the bright life with the sweet voice of the canary. And a stream of consciousness, which is used by Mansfield as a narrator mode brilliantly, makes the main character’s emotions tangible. The best these somber feelings are felt reading the end of the story. Do not miss these important lines and thoughts!
«The Canary» is a small novel, but it has made me think for the more time unlike the one which I have taken for reading. One can think after reading the whole story: «Be a self-reflection person, have the only one friend (a little bird is better), attach to him and…»… Maybe.
«The Canary» is written in first-person, so the reader can see what is going on in the text through the personal narrator’s (and the main character’s) perception. The reader feels the narrator’s dejection in the first sentences, lines, words. It is all about the nail and a cage, which has to be there. But there is no cage and the canary, who is a special part of the main character’s life.
The Canary is not a martyr in a cage. He was beloved. Everything was unique in this bird – the voice, the look, the demeanour . And neither flowers in the garden nor the evening star can pay the narrator’s attention or even replace the canary after his death. The narrator do loves the bird and will never love anyone else. She just doesn’t want to leave the perfect image of the canary, the only who lifted her mood, understood her. The strength of the stroke is too big, and, in the end, the main character relapses into a melancholy apathy.
«The Canary» is not only about the dreadfully sad love for the bird and the narrator’s flow of feelings and sensations. The one main mean of expressiveness, which the author is used, is her style. All abstracts, which start with an ellipsis, are used to show the main character’s bitter flashbacks to the bright life with the sweet voice of the canary. And a stream of consciousness, which is used by Mansfield as a narrator mode brilliantly, makes the main character’s emotions tangible. The best these somber feelings are felt reading the end of the story. Do not miss these important lines and thoughts!
«The Canary» is a small novel, but it has made me think for the more time unlike the one which I have taken for reading. One can think after reading the whole story: «Be a self-reflection person, have the only one friend (a little bird is better), attach to him and…»… Maybe.
January 8, 2024
Última coleccion de relatos de KM, publicada postumamente por su marido. Solo 6 de los 21 relatos estan terminados. Aún así, la colección sigue siendo excelente. "La mosca" es una relato genial, cruelemente realista sobre el luto, el olvido, y la rutina; "El canario" es corto y elegante en su trato soledad y el luto. En "Historia del hombre casado", un relato no terminado, KM se permite ser más instrospectiva, reflexiva, sincera y fatalista para tratar la influencia del pasado en nuestras dinamicas amorosas, con un registro que se me hizo similar a la prosa Rilke en Los Cuadernos de Malet Laurids Brigge en su evocacion sombría y casi mistica del pasado. Me parece un relato genial, y siento una pena genuina no saber como Mansfield lo hubiese querido terminar. De "Preludio" solo recuerdo vuelve a ser protaganista la familia Brunnel; lamentablemente lo leí hace mucho, acaso actualice una reseña con una lectura más conciensuda.
May 17, 2023
I didn't read the unfinished stories because I don't think KM would have wanted me to. She probably wouldn't have wanted me to read any of these stories (printed posthumously) but there are three absolute gems of stories in this little collection that I think are up there with some of her best writing!
The Dolls House, Honeymoon and a Cup of Tea deserve 5* each! Just read those three and you'll feel that this book was worth it.
I'm flicking between reading KMs short stories and another novel and when I get to the novel it throws into stark comparison the musicality of KMs writing. The sounds of the words, the pace of each line, the rythym. When you step into her world every detail is brighter, more special. It's hard to step out.
The Dolls House, Honeymoon and a Cup of Tea deserve 5* each! Just read those three and you'll feel that this book was worth it.
I'm flicking between reading KMs short stories and another novel and when I get to the novel it throws into stark comparison the musicality of KMs writing. The sounds of the words, the pace of each line, the rythym. When you step into her world every detail is brighter, more special. It's hard to step out.
April 3, 2019
I didn't realize these stories were mostly unfinished. Honestly, most of them didn't seem to promising.
Want to read
May 23, 2014
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/schola...
Introductory Note — by John Middleton Murry p. ix
The Doll's House
Honeymoon p. 14
A Cup of Tea p. 24
Taking the Veil p. 37
The Fly p. 45
The Canary p. 55
A Married Man's Story p. 61
The Doves' Nest p. 84
Six Years After p. 110
Daphne p. 118
Father and the Girls p. 127
All Serene p. 137
A Bad Idea p. 145
A Man and his Dog p. 150
Such a Sweet Old Lady p. 156
Honesty p. 160
Susannah p. 167
Second Violin p. 172
Mr. and Mrs. Williams p. 177
Weak Heart p. 183
Widowed p. 190
[imprint] p. 197
July 1, 2015
Unfortunately most of these stories are unfinished and only the first few glow with the Katherine Mansfield magnificence. However any collection which contains The Doll's House is worth 3 stars for that alone.
Read
June 25, 2008Similar to "The Garden Party" but several of these short stories are unfinished.
May 3, 2017
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.
And the bird said
NEVERMORE
- Edgar Allan Poe.
As I finished reading "The Canary", I turned off the screen of my phone and sat back, for I couldn’t that easily dispel the haze of some resigned melancholy descending upon me like a mourning veil – the imaginary equivalent of the one we all are to contribute ourselves to and never take off again one day.
Maybe it’s the evening so warm that all the brightest sparks stand up against the remnants of despair that dwells in my memory – some birds still twitter faintly, ready to take a night’s rest to fill their small breasts with the vivid and ever unconquered soul of spring before the darkest days; or maybe it is the very air of a birth that makes me perceive the story as if my skin was torn off and wounds left open to the wind – I guess that realizing the eternal circulation of nature, I hear a remote and vague echo of Mansfield’s sadness, “dwelling deep down, part of one, like one’s breathing”. I cannot stop admiring how sacred is the way the smallest griefs sometimes tend to rise to the severity of thunderstorms in a heart that cares.
What deprivations the character’s soul must have suffered, how betrayed and utterly disillusioned she must have been to love the singing of the birds so softly! I guess it is the feature of the wounded hearts to cling to the last glimmer of light, so faint and distant. But there are ones who need only a faint emanation to feel the glory of happiness take over anxiety.
For “love something one must”. So do I dare to deliver the judgement, to look down on her? Does any of us have their ideas upon the narrow-mindedness of a woman giving her heart to a transient little bird meant only to treat us to its singing and hopping ‘till it’s able to by the bless of God? Is that woman even sane? So I am convinced the character is not a morbid one. She’s safe and sound. The Scarecrow? “No matter. It doesn’t matter. Not in the least.” Is it sensible? Isn’t it the high time for her spirit rise against that sea of hypocrisy and devastation? Clenching my teeth, deliberately putting all that empathy aside, I’d say she utterly messed up falling in love with the sense of fake security, drowning herself in a kind of late infantilism, stubbornly refusing the fact she failed socially, or her illusions failed and led her straight into an empty house, condemned to a life of an outcast, trapped into emotional vacuum. Not alone, but lonely. Isn’t it the worst scenario ever? I may sound ironic, but deep down there I know I... am mostly self-ironic now.
The thing we all should learn from her philosophy for sure is to have the guts to say: “And yet I regret what? I have much to be thankful for”. I strongly believe it will be of no use to master the art of surviving, or even being the insecurity, if you’re safe in the asylum of all the hopeless dreamers. If you’re safe looking upon the world from the highest tower ever, laid-back, bewitched in shades of ivory.
But I’ve gone too far. Coming back to the story, I should say I was fascinated trying to solve the puzzle of the image of the nail. You see, there are some in our lives as well as in the life of this Mansfield’s character. Personally I do not dare to take them out – those memories, souvenirs, remnants of the past we worship, the days we spare to reminisce of others long gone but still giving us peace as well as sunshine does, coming through your curtain in the morning after the night’s doom of storm.
The striking idea comes to me instantly through the image of the cage. Like Mansfield’s scarecrow, some of us are doomed to stay empty as cages, devoted in a fatal way – once and forever – for they are cages, resistant, isolated. There’s something imperious, commanding in a way the narrator thinks the canary shared her life, for there was no choice implied, no freedom of thought and spirit, no will to get along with or to flame up in revolt.
Some of us have to be lonely. Some have chosen to. But some were meant to.
O, how I solitude adore!
That element of noblest wit,
Where I have learnt Apollo's lore,
Without the pains to study it.
For thy sake I in love am grown
With what thy fancy does pursue;
But when I think upon my own,
I hate it for that reason too,
Because it needs must hinder me
From seeing and from serving thee.
O solitude, O how I solitude adore!
- Henry Purcell.
And the bird said
NEVERMORE
- Edgar Allan Poe.
As I finished reading "The Canary", I turned off the screen of my phone and sat back, for I couldn’t that easily dispel the haze of some resigned melancholy descending upon me like a mourning veil – the imaginary equivalent of the one we all are to contribute ourselves to and never take off again one day.
Maybe it’s the evening so warm that all the brightest sparks stand up against the remnants of despair that dwells in my memory – some birds still twitter faintly, ready to take a night’s rest to fill their small breasts with the vivid and ever unconquered soul of spring before the darkest days; or maybe it is the very air of a birth that makes me perceive the story as if my skin was torn off and wounds left open to the wind – I guess that realizing the eternal circulation of nature, I hear a remote and vague echo of Mansfield’s sadness, “dwelling deep down, part of one, like one’s breathing”. I cannot stop admiring how sacred is the way the smallest griefs sometimes tend to rise to the severity of thunderstorms in a heart that cares.
What deprivations the character’s soul must have suffered, how betrayed and utterly disillusioned she must have been to love the singing of the birds so softly! I guess it is the feature of the wounded hearts to cling to the last glimmer of light, so faint and distant. But there are ones who need only a faint emanation to feel the glory of happiness take over anxiety.
For “love something one must”. So do I dare to deliver the judgement, to look down on her? Does any of us have their ideas upon the narrow-mindedness of a woman giving her heart to a transient little bird meant only to treat us to its singing and hopping ‘till it’s able to by the bless of God? Is that woman even sane? So I am convinced the character is not a morbid one. She’s safe and sound. The Scarecrow? “No matter. It doesn’t matter. Not in the least.” Is it sensible? Isn’t it the high time for her spirit rise against that sea of hypocrisy and devastation? Clenching my teeth, deliberately putting all that empathy aside, I’d say she utterly messed up falling in love with the sense of fake security, drowning herself in a kind of late infantilism, stubbornly refusing the fact she failed socially, or her illusions failed and led her straight into an empty house, condemned to a life of an outcast, trapped into emotional vacuum. Not alone, but lonely. Isn’t it the worst scenario ever? I may sound ironic, but deep down there I know I... am mostly self-ironic now.
The thing we all should learn from her philosophy for sure is to have the guts to say: “And yet I regret what? I have much to be thankful for”. I strongly believe it will be of no use to master the art of surviving, or even being the insecurity, if you’re safe in the asylum of all the hopeless dreamers. If you’re safe looking upon the world from the highest tower ever, laid-back, bewitched in shades of ivory.
But I’ve gone too far. Coming back to the story, I should say I was fascinated trying to solve the puzzle of the image of the nail. You see, there are some in our lives as well as in the life of this Mansfield’s character. Personally I do not dare to take them out – those memories, souvenirs, remnants of the past we worship, the days we spare to reminisce of others long gone but still giving us peace as well as sunshine does, coming through your curtain in the morning after the night’s doom of storm.
The striking idea comes to me instantly through the image of the cage. Like Mansfield’s scarecrow, some of us are doomed to stay empty as cages, devoted in a fatal way – once and forever – for they are cages, resistant, isolated. There’s something imperious, commanding in a way the narrator thinks the canary shared her life, for there was no choice implied, no freedom of thought and spirit, no will to get along with or to flame up in revolt.
Some of us have to be lonely. Some have chosen to. But some were meant to.
O, how I solitude adore!
That element of noblest wit,
Where I have learnt Apollo's lore,
Without the pains to study it.
For thy sake I in love am grown
With what thy fancy does pursue;
But when I think upon my own,
I hate it for that reason too,
Because it needs must hinder me
From seeing and from serving thee.
O solitude, O how I solitude adore!
- Henry Purcell.
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