PRELUDE
by Katherine Mansfield, 1920 (as The Aloe, 1918)

Katherine Mansfield's "Prelude" was published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press under the title The Aloe. The story was revised and retitled by Mansfield, and collected in Bliss and Other Stories, apparently to bring it more in line with her growing appreciation of the form of the short fiction she was writing but had a difficult time defining. ("What form is it?" she asked a friend in a letter published in Letters. "As far as I know, it's more or less my own invention.") With a beginning in medias res and the lack of a sustained, overt plotline, the story proceeds by images clustering into symbolic patterns that stand in harmonic relationships to one another and that direct meaning. In speaking about "Prelude" in another letter, Mansfield said, "[It] just unfolds and opens."

The writing of "Prelude" followed a visit from Mansfield's brother, with whom she shared memories of childhood, and it coincided with an awakening from artistic fatigue. Her revision of the story before publication followed her brother's death in World War I and her interest in creating a story in his honor. Based on both their childhood memories, "Prelude" was apparently to end with an announcement of a pregnancy that would herald the birth of a boy child, her brother just deceased. But the story stops before the pregnancy is announced, although images suggest that the mother, Linda, is pregnant.

The appearance of a boy child was delayed for a dozen years, until he was introduced in another New Zealand story, "At the Bay" This story follows the themes and motifs found in "Prelude" so closely that they might be considered a diptych, for what is started in "Prelude" is continued in "At the Bay." Both stories have at various times and by various readers been declared Mansfield's best. All Mansfield readers agree that these two stories taken with some 12 or 15 others declare Mansfield the great writer she hoped to be.

"Prelude" tells of three days in the life of the Stanley Burnell family at the time of their move to a larger house befitting his achievements in business. The Burnell family consists of husband Stanley, wife Linda, the daughters Isabel, Lottie, and Kezia, and Linda's sister Beryl and their mother, Mrs. Fairchild. In most short stories characters are flat rather than round, a circumstance attributed to the story's symbolic underpinnings as well as its short length.

This is not to say ipso facto that round characters are better than flat characters. Rather, in any given short story characterization is suited to need. What is notable here is the manner in which Mansfield achieves characterization in a limited time and space by juxtaposing her characters so that they double over and comment on one another. The reader knows Linda by getting to know Mrs. Fairchild, Beryl, and Kezia. The reader understands Kezia by recognizing Beryl's and Linda's traits in the child. The female characters are spread along a spectrum from child to mature woman. Kezia is just learning to differentiate her female ego from that of others, Isabel is clearly patterning herself after what she understands Beryl to be, and Beryl is dreaming of a lover and fighting her "false self." Linda's serene aspect belies her anger and frustration at the role she finds herself playing. Mrs. Fairchild, beloved of Linda, returns that love and special attention while she carefully and deliberately puts the new house in order, postponing her fears of the future.

Surrounding the new house is a garden, and while the women put the house in order, moving from one room to another, Kezia explores the garden, moving through the neatly arranged flowers and well laid-out orchards. Surrounding the garden, however, is the bush in all its frightening aspects. From her safe position Kezia is aware of the tangle of trees, the strange scents, and the cream flowers that buzz with flies, and she knows, as do the other members of her family, that the reality of nightmares is embodied in the dark bush and that, after all, life is a prelude to death.

Stanley Burnell is the only male in the immediate family. He is the cock in the henhouse and the bull in the china shop. He is loved but also tolerated. His needs are carefully tended to, and he is the center around which the household dances until he leaves for work, when the woman sigh and relax their ways throughout the day. Other male characters in the story, although they seem peripheral, are actually central, for they comment on the masculine role in society. The handyman Pat wears an earring, which astonishes Kezia. He is kind and gentle with the children but capable of beheading the duck in a way that frightens Kezia into hysteria. The cousins Rags and Pip Trout are sons of another of Mrs. Fairchild's daughters. Rags resists the masculine role. He is still young enough to play with dolls, and he does, though he knows that what he does is "shameful." Pip, who is somewhat older, adopts the stance of a stereotypical male, ordering his cousins about and "training" his dog Snooker.

The theme of sexual frustrations and anxieties is one of several that are important to overall meaning in the story. Linda loves Stanley, but he frightens her. His desire for a son is apparent in his every move, and Linda fears for her life. She has already had three children, and she has been diagnosed as having a heart condition that could kill her. The aloe, with its tall, stout, swelling stem, has special significance for Linda. It represents male power, the means to escape. For Mrs. Fairchild the aloe is the century plant, blooming once every 100 years and marking a family's movement in time and through generations. Beryl's desire for a lover expresses itself in various ways—in her annoyance with Stanley for moving the family to the country, in her flirting with Stanley, which seems both an act of revenge as she watches him respond to her moves, and as a practice exercise in anticipation of future lovers.

If sexual activity is fraught with difficulty and pain, it is still the basis of the movements of generations, which are timed with the movements of the planets. Mansfield parallels historical time with a family delineated in all of its tenses—past, present, and future. The century plant is coming into bloom as it has in the past, and it will bloom again in another century.

—Mary Rohrberger