Male protagonists and their marital situation portrayed in Katherine Mansfield’s “The Stranger” and “A Birthday”

Examination Thesis from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Trier (Anglistik), course: Oberseminar Mansfield, language: English, abstract: Many of Katherine Mansfield’s stories deal with relationship, friendship, marriage and family life. The male-female relationship always plays a major role in her stories and is an ever returning motif throughout her works. Nevertheless, the ways they are presented are always different but the same. The settings and the plot usually differ, bur the problems of male-female relationship, such as the dominating male character always return. Her own personal experience in her family background might be one reason for it. Nevertheless, she did not always focus on relationship problems, she could also write perfectly about romances and romantic relationships, as in The Singing Lesson, Poison or Mr. and Mrs. Dove. This might have portrayed her own longing for a romance. The focus of the following discourse is set on the unhappy relationships she portrayed in her works. It deals not only with the relationship itself, but also with the male characters and how they change or do not change throughout the story. The stories chosen are A Birthday and The Stranger. The reason for only choosing two is the limited space for the discourse, which makes it impossible to include a third story. At the Bay, for instance, would have been another perfect example for this issue. All of them represent alienation in a relationship and portray different reasons for this to happen. In order to characterize the relationship, not only the male protagonists will be highlighted, but also the female characters of the stories. At the end the differences and similarities between the male protagonists and their relationship will be shown and worked out. The fact that this will be an own passage in the discourse will make the conclusion rather short, since the comparison of the two characters and their relationship also summarizes the discourse.