On Bliss by Katherine Mansfield
A brief slip of a story about a party where nothing is quite as it seems
Hi, short story friends. Before we get into this month’s short story, Bliss by Katherine Mansfield, I wanted to let you know that I’ve introduced a subscription plan, because last month I received my first subscriber pledges! So! I hope you’ll still stick around.
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So, now, let’s jump in and read a short story together, shall we?
This month’s story is not an Alice Munro story! Lately, I have been struggling with my own writing and utterly embarrassing lack of confidence/ self-belief, and so I’ve in turn been finding it very hard to read. And Alice Munro stories are so very long! And though I love her stories, they are also not necessarily the easiest or lightest or briefest or indeed happiest of reads. I didn’t want to force myself to read something, just for the sake of it, and then feel bad about having to force myself to pick it apart and write about it too.
So, instead, I come to you with another story that I did read a few months ago and fills my criteria of being a) light (-ish) and b) easy to read and mostly above all, c) brief. (Yes! A short story that is actually short!).
The story I’m talking about is Bliss by Katherine Mansfield. I know it may sound to some perhaps sacrilegious, but I’ve never read any Katherine Mansfield before, just as I’ve, say, not read any Raymond Carver (and I’m aware everyone says you should read his work if you’re writing short stories). In fact, if it helps anyone else who feels like they ‘should’ be reading so-and-so or so-and-so, then please know that are thousands of big old famous writers whose work I have never read. But anyway, I digress; a couple of months ago, I was doing some research into something (I actually can’t remember what, so clearly whatever story idea I did have didn’t stick) and this perfect little story, Bliss, popped up and I’d love to talk about it with you instead.
First, a little synopsis:
Bliss, which you can read here for free, is about a little London dinner party, hosted by Bertha Young and her husband Harry, told from Bertha’s perspective in a close third person narrative.
Bertha is very excited for this dinner party, and she is indeed an excitable sort of person. Everything is set up so beautifully for the party and Bertha is excited to talk with her new friend, her new ‘find’, Pearl. Bertha sees Pearl as alluring, mysterious and she likes her, a lot. But Harry thinks Pearl is dull and pokes fun of her behind her back.
Harry arrives to his own dinner party late, when some of the other guests have already gathered. Pearl is also late. Bertha’s having a fabulous old time but she can’t help but notice how Harry is with Pearl - rude and cold, snappish. Bertha thinks to herself that later, she will convince Harry how wonderful Pearl is. In spite of how he is being towards Pearl, Bertha feels a swell of attraction to Harry - she ‘desired her husband’ - and she feels a kind of ‘bliss’ in her body.
Eventually the party is over, quite quickly (this story moves fast) and Bertha happens to look up and see… something which I don’t want to necessarily spell out but let’s just say there is more to Harry and Pearl than meets the eye. You simply have to read either to the end of this post, or the end of the story to find out (and it won't take you very long!).
I really enjoyed reading Bliss. It felt gossipy and elegant and sort of like a scene from a glamorous movie. I have no idea if that is the way that Katherine Mansfield intended for it to be read, but that is the way that I read it.
What I especially love is the characterisation in Bliss; in a short story, you obviously don’t have an awful lot of time or space to set up a sense of who a person (by person, I mean character) really is, and yet here is the opening line from Bliss which tells you pretty much everything we need to know about who Bertha is:
Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at–nothing–at nothing, simply.
Don’t you just immediately get a sense of who she is? Can’t you just picture her? Do you see all that movement - dancing, bowling, throwing - the energy fizzing, the giddiness from her? I talk to my short story students about how important it is to keep their characters moving and not static because a) movement moves a story along but also more significantly b) the way they move, quite literally, through the world shows us something about who they are. And here is such a perfect example of this. For Bertha is the embodiment of ‘bliss’ that just spills out everywhere - as proved by the second line where it is literally inside of her:
What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly by a feeling of bliss–absolute bliss!–as though you'd suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe? . . .
The same very clever, very succinct characterisation stands for all the characters. Harry is the kind of man who arrives late for his own dinner party (although, maybe this isn’t that unusual for the time, but it seems to say something about him to me) - because he really is a little obnoxious, even though Bertha fails to see it because she is head over heels with him. Harry is the sort of person who ‘rushed into battle where no battle was’ - that is to say, he is argumentative, provocative. I imagine him to be the equivalent of the modern day guy who thinks he owns the room at the party, and talks and laughs loudly and thinks he is being terribly funny when really he is being plain rude.
And then there is Pearl, whose secretive and mysterious nature is all but made clear the moment she walks into the room and we are told that she ‘seldom did look at people directly.’ With her ‘heavy eyelids’ and ‘strange half-smile’ she is an unknown, beguiling creature and Bertha desperately wants to know her.
And it’s true that something between the women passes - some sort of knowingness that Mansfield puts so beautifully:
Bertha knew, suddenly, as if the longest, most intimate look had passed between them–as if they had said to each other: "You too?"–that Pearl Fulton, stirring the beautiful red soup in the grey plate, was feeling just what she was feeling.
There follows a moment, almost transcendent, when Bertha and Pearl stand looking out at the garden.
And the two women stood side by side looking at the slender, flowering tree. Although it was so still it seemed, like the flame of a candle, to stretch up, to point, to quiver in the bright air, to grow taller and taller as they gazed–almost to touch the rim of the round, silver moon.
How long did they stand there? Both, as it were, caught in that circle of unearthly light, understanding each other perfectly, creatures of another world, and wondering what they were to do in this one with all this blissful treasure that burned in their bosoms and dropped, in silver flowers, from their hair and hands?
For ever–for a moment? And did Miss Fulton murmur: "Yes. Just that." Or did Bertha dream it?
There are obvious interpretations that read this as sexual desire, but it also feels like something else - like a moment of feeling understood without needing to say it in words, perhaps. As for Pearl, I think that what she’s feeling is possibly something else entirely: guilt (as you’ll see, if you read the rest of the story). And this makes this moment all the more tragic, because Bertha has completely misread it.
All throughout the evening, Bertha is in this perpetual knot of high energy, trying hard to contain this overflowing feeling of happiness and love. When Harry compliments the dessert, we are told Bertha ‘almost could have wept with child-like pleasure.’ And so it goes on:
Oh, why did she feel so tender towards the whole world tonight? Everything was good–was right. All that happened seemed to fill again her brimming cup of bliss.
And later, this:
Really–really–she had everything. She was young. Harry and she were as much in love as ever, and they got on together splendidly and were really good pals. She had an adorable baby. They didn't have to worry about money. They had this absolutely satisfactory house and garden. And friends–modern, thrilling friends, writers and painters and poets or people keen on social questions–just the kind of friends they wanted. And then there were books, and there was music, and she had found a wonderful little dressmaker, and they were going abroad in the summer, and their new cook made the most superb omelettes. . . .
It’s almost predictable that someone who is this happy can’t possibly be this happy for long. And I think this is where Bliss becomes so interesting. As we all know from that Chekhov quote - people are just having dinner, etc - something has to happen for their lives to change in that moment (as it does in any short story; my writing students will recognise this in the penny drop moment that I talk about in our lessons). Because underneath the facade of the party - the silk dresses, the lights, the cushions expertly placed on the couches just so, the warm fire aglow, the moon in the night sky, the red and yellow tulips in the garden outside, visible from the balcony - there is something else darker coming.
There are clues: two dark cats skulk across the garden (the sight of them makes Bertha shiver), the flowers are ‘heavy’, their scent too strong. Bertha suddenly thinks:
Soon these people will go. The house will be quiet–quiet. The lights will be out. And you and he will be alone together in the dark room–the warm bed. . . .
Now, I can’t tell if Bertha is looking forward to this, to being alone with Harry, or not. She’s told herself again and again that she loves him, adores him, but it does feel foreboding. And here is when we see that Bertha is not merely the silly, giddy ‘girl’ that she perhaps came across as earlier - she’s complicated, in her feelings, and her marriage is more complicated too:
For the first time in her life Bertha Young desired her husband. Oh, she'd loved him–she'd been in love with him, of course, in every other way, but just not in that way. And equally, of course, she'd understood that he was different. They'd discussed it so often. It had worried her dreadfully at first to find that she was so cold, but after a time it had not seemed to matter. They were so frank with each other–such good pals. That was the best of being modern.
But now–ardently! ardently! The word ached in her ardent body! Was this what that feeling of bliss had been leading up to?
It’s obvious now that what Bertha feels towards Pearl is a moment of exploring her sexuality. We also now know that Bertha isn’t necessarily attracted to Harry sexually, even though for much of the story she tells us how much she adores him and indeed has a baby with him. Now, she wants him. But what of Pearl, too?
And so of course, it makes sense that at the exact moment that Bertha decides she wants Harry, she won’t actually be able to have him, for he does not belong to her. Because at that precise moment, she looks up and - spoiler alert - sees the look on Harry’s face as he passes Pearl her coat, the look that says ‘I adore you.’ And then she sees the way Pearl looks back at him, and touches his face, and the way Harry whispers ‘Tomorrow’ to her, arranging their next secret tryst. And just like that, suddenly the whole evening has changed. All of it has been an illusion and Bertha’s world has momentarily spun on its axis, as she is left despairing, as in the penultimate sentence: ‘What is going to happen now?’
So, what a frightfully clever little story Bliss is. In some ways, reading it today, it does admittedly feel a little on the nose - the over exaggeration of Bertha’s happiness, for instance - but in other ways, it makes sense for the short story that this juxtaposition of her happiness, her bliss, vs her disappointment and despair is needed. But at the same time, because of who Bertha is, because of who Mansfield makes Bertha be, I also find it hard to believe that Bertha won’t be able to find her joy again. I think she will, because that is precisely the sort of person she is.
So is the moral of the story that ‘bliss’ doesn’t exist? That it is so easily shattered? That any bliss is illusion? Or is it that like all human emotions, bliss is but fleeting, but it will come and go. For me, it’s the latter. How about you?
Let me know if you have a read! I’d love to know your thoughts.
Until next month,
Huma
PS If you’re getting to know me through Substack, then let me say hi. I’m Huma, the author of four books including my novel Playing Games, my short story collection, Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love and my memoir How We Met, all published to critical acclaim. I teach writing classes on short story writing and life writing and run the newsletter Dear Huma. On Substack, I share my notes and thoughts on reading stories. Thanks for reading!
Thanks so much for posting this - I’ve loved “Bliss” ever since I first read it as a young teenager (years ago!)