CHAPTER 3IWomen and Romance in Marriage a la Mode and Her First Best

The following sample essay on CHAPTER 3IWomen and Romance in Marriage a la Mode and Her First Best tells about stereotypically decent wife.

The story Marriage a la Mode, composed in 1921, tells the story of a young wife who appears to abandon her husband in order to embrace an essentially frivolous life surrounded by poets and artists, none of whom appear to possess any especially meaningful or authentic talent. In this way, the story could be read as a cautionary tale concerning the fickle nature of youth and the decay of traditional social institutions at the turn of the 20th century.

Such a reading would fit with the general history of modernism. Indeed, as one contemporary critic noted, the story pains a picture of the ordinary but loving and fine-natured husband and his silly little wife, who turns from him to a rabble of sponging sham poets and painters.

In this sense, the story appears to be a consideration of the certain frivolity at the heat of contemporary life, something that Mansfield best expresses via the capacity for the central character of the story, Isabel, to disregard the institution of marriage and the moral responsibilities that it brings and, seemingly, to deliberately ignore her duty as a wife.

Within the narrative of the story, this takes place when Isabel decides not to reply ao an exasperated, but still affectionate, letter from her husband, and instead goes to spend more time with her friends. Importantly, however, it is also possible to read the story as giving a positive quality to Isabel’s dismissal of marriage, one that is grounded on a new found autonomy experienced by women, especially young women who are no longer beholden to ideal of duty that would previously have defined their lives.

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In order to provide a critical analysis of the story, therefore, it is necessary to consider the way in which Mansfield presents her female character alongside feminist thinking on the kind of behavior that this character rejects. If one does this, it is possible to argue that the reading of the story as simply depicting moral vacuity is misguided.

According to W. Todd Martin, the reader’s response to Mansfield’s narrative centers around how one considers the Isabel’s decision not to reply to her husband’s letter at the end the story, something that it would reasonably be expected that a loving and dutiful wife would do. Martin writes that, once Isabel decides not to respond to the letter then the reader infers that this marks a fundamental shift in her attitude towards him, and towards her role as a wife in general: Throughout the story Isabel seems disingenuous, allowing her friends to intrude on her husband’s weekend at home – a time he had hoped to spend with her and the children (Martin 2011: 159). Despite this seeming inevitability, however, it is important to note that Isabel herself insists that she will, at some point or another, respond to her husband. At the end of the story, Mansfield stages an internal monologue in which Isabel must decide whether or not to respond to her husband’s letter. She writes, Now was the moment, now she must decide. Would she go with them, or stay here and write to William. Which, which should it be? But how could there be any question? Of course she would stay here and write (Mansfield 2002: 249). This assumption that the right thing to do would be to stay and write to her husband is one grounded in the duties of the stereotypically decent wife, a role that Isabel would have been expected to fulfil given the social period in which the story is set.

Her decision to ignore these duties follows quickly, however, once her friends interrupt her thinking by shouting up to her and she is once again presented with the option of immediate enjoyment. Rather than staying to actually write the letter in reply, Isabel responds to their call be stating to herself go with them, and write to William later. Some other time. Later. Not now. But I shall certainly write (Mansfield 2002: 249). Despite this assertion that she will perform the role of a loving wife, Isabel nonetheless makes it clear that she still considers this duty to be something that she needs to keep in mind. In this sense, rather than declaring herself to be directly neglecting her role as a wife, Isabel suggests that she is still aware of the nature of this role, and of the duties that it implies for her.

Her concern for her husband, however, is belied by the Manfied’s description of Isabel’s exist from the room in which she has read the letter. Rather than describe her leaving in a way that suggests that she will stick to her resolution, Mansfield writes, And, laughing in the new way, she ran down the stairs (Mansfield 2002: 249). This notion that Isabel laughs in a new way is key to understanding the finality of the moment that Mansfield represents, at least in relation to Isabel’s marriage. Specifically, this description suggests that Isabel is now no longer the person that she was previously and that, regardless of her future actions, there will be no return to the state that she was in previously. Rather than simply giving a moralistic reading of this moment, however, it is equally possible to be understand the newness represented by Isabel’s laughter as being authentically positive. Instead of remaining beholden to a tradition moral structure, Isabel’s own vivacity enables her to approach a fundamentally new comportment to the world, one that offers the potential for actual enjoyment.

Importantly, therefore, while it is possible to read the story as it was read by contemporary reviewers and to understand it as a depiction of an essentially frivolous wife, it is remains the case that Isabel can be described as experiencing a real, authentic joy in the company of her friends, something that is clearly absent from her experience of marriage. The expression of such joy itself can be argued to be a motivating factor behind much of Mansfield’s writing and, in this way, it is possible to relate a positive reading of the end of the story in question to Mansfield’s own thinking in general. In a letter written to Murry, for example, she writes that:

I’ve two “kick offs” in the writing game. One is joy real joy and that sort of writing I could only do in just that state of being in some perfectly blissful way at peace. Then something delicate and lovely seems to open before my eyes, like a flower without thought of a frost or a cold breath knowing that all about it is warm and tender and “ready.” And that I try, ever so humbly, to express (Mansfield, 1984: 56).

For Mansfield, joy is both a condition of writing, and also something that she seeks to express through her work. It is something that is fundamentally different to other ways of relating to the world and that clearly carries a kind of potential that is not found in other feelings.

Importantly, however, this joy is, in Manfield’s own words, often accompanied by something much darker and therefore more difficult to affirm. According to the same letter, the second kick-off that motivates her to write could be described as Not hate or destruction but an extremely deep sense of hopelessness, of everything doomed to disaster (Mansfield, 1984: 56). If one is to affirm jot as a constructive, positive force in Mansfield’s writing, it is therefore also necessary to understand that it may be accompanied by an overriding sense of despair. Just the artist must seek to create one world within the world that exists, so a potentially transformative happiness may be seen as wrapped within a sense of true hopelessness.

These two motivating forces or feelings of Mansfield’s may be seen to be expressed in the final moment of the story in question. On the one hand, Isabel feels a clear joy, one that enables her to rise above what could be considered to be the drudgery of domestic life and stale duty, while on the other hand it appears that such a life is inherently unstable and untenable and that, as a result, Isabel is doomed to suffer an unhappiness that she has only briefly been able to defer. Importantly, the need to recognize a certain kind of despair within contemporary life is accompanied, in Mansfield’s thinking and writing by a refusal to allow it to dominate one’s life. Indeed, Mansfield herself can be argued to view literature and writing itself as an act of resistance against a despair that, while it is an undeniable part of life, is nonetheless something that must be resisted. In another letter to Murry, for example, she writes: Oh it is agony to meet corruption when one thinks all is fair the big snail under the leaf the spots in the child’s lung. Hanging in our little cages on the awful wall over the gulf of eternity we must sing sing” (Mansfield 1984: 37). For Mansfield, therefore, literature can be understood to serve two key purposes. On the one hand, it functions according to a certain sense of joy albeit one that is mediated by despair, and, on the other, it must enable one to make an actual stand against despair. To sing in this context is both to affirm the existence of despair and to refuse to resign oneself to it.

From this perspective, it is possible to give a reading of the end Marriage a la Mode as manifesting both such a joy and also a potential sense of despair. One of the most important aspects of this joy is the manner in which its newness appears to allow Isabel to affirm a sense of happiness over and above her duties as a wife. Indeed, by performing such an affirmation Mansfield can be argued to effectively denaturalise marital convention that would have been expected to otherwise define the life of her heroine. This act of denaturalisation enables one to understand the institution of marriage itself in a different. Indeed, it is possible to argue that, while marriage itself may be seen to be an important institution in the world of the story, Isabel’s refusal to acknowledge it as being all important may be taken to represent an affirmation of her own self-hood, something that represents a kind of joy in the face of despair, something that Mansfield as being integral to the act of writing itself.

It is possible to understand this joyful repudiation of marriage from a feminist perspective, in particular it is possible to understand this if one pays attention to writing concerning purportedly affectionate relationships between husbands and wives, especially with regard to women as naturally loving or concerned subjects. With regard to this, Silvia Federici argues that key aspects of what are generally assumed to be naturally occuring female traits are, in fact, the result of social conditions that demand that women behave in a certain manner. By tracing her argument back to the historical and subjective origins of capitalism itself, Federici is able to argue that both house work and the emotional labour of supporting a husband ‘has been imposed on women (Federici 2012: 40). This imposition, however, is not simply something that stops at the coercion that women feel in order to carry out certain acts of work, but it has also become a constitutive aspect of the female character itself.

From a feminist perspective, therefore, it is possible to read Isabel’s refusal to acquiesce to the demand to care for her husband as being an explicitly feminist action. It is one that places the immediate happiness of the individual character over and above the social conventions that they would normally be expected to conform to. In this way, the story effectively combines the happiness and joy that Mansfield insisted accompanied much of her writing, with a real sense of despair concerning the capacity for Isabel’s life to be sustained past her immediate enjoyment. Importantly, the story does not suggest that Isabel has achieved any actually meaningful independence following her departure, although it does make clear that she is not beholden to duty. In this sense, while Isabel’s joy may offer something new the actual direction and sustainability of the newness is not approached.

A similar combination of joy and despair, as mediated through the presentation of a typically feminine activity may be observed in the story Her First Ball, composed in 1921. This story centers on a character called Leila who travels from a non-descript provincial existence in order to experience her first ball as a young woman. Initially she is both deeply excited and nervous at the prospect of the ball, and is clearly intimidated by the other women whom she expects to see there. In particular, Leila is immediately and deeply aware of the fact that she is unable to adopt the same aloof, uncaring attitude of the other ball guests, something that she feels marks her out as being immediately provincial and, therefore, as not belonging in her environment. Mansfield writes in the opening sections the story: Oh, dear, how hard it was to be indifferent like the others! She tried not to smile too much; she tried not to care. But every single things was so new and exciting (Mansfield 2002: 236). Given this opening, it is possible to read the story as a relatively simple psychological portrait of someone who has lived a provincial life and who is brought face to face with the reality of society in a manner that causes her to clearly feel as if she is an imposter, and as if she is naturally unable and ill-suited to settle into the natural rhythm of an upper class way of life.

Throughout the story, Mansfield emphasises Leila’s alienation and her incapacity to understand precisely what is taking place around her. Indeed, through focusing on such alienation, she creates the impression that society itself, especially the upper-class society in which she is embroiled, involves a series of rules and regulations of which she has little meaningful knowledge. At another point in the story, for example, Mansfield writes, Strange faces smiled at Leila – sweetly, vaguely. Strange voices answered. Of course my dear. But Leila felt the girls didn’t really see her. They were looking towards the men. Why didn’t the men being? What were they waiting for? In these descriptions, Mansfield creates a clear distinction between the formal behaviors that one might associate with society at this level, and the actual truth or essence of this society. While Leila is able to participate in some way in the formal aspects of this behavior, she is nonetheless consistently alienated from what such actions may or may not actually mean.

The apparent meaning of these actions, however, are given a nihilistic explanation by a nondescript fat man with whom Leila dances. This man, instantly recognizing that Leila is attending her first ever dance, tells her that he has been coming to events such as these for thirty years, before insisting that to Leila that before long she will be sitting up there on the stage, looking on, in your nice black velvet. And those pretty arms will have turned into short fat ones, and you’ll beat time with such a different kind of fan (Mansfield 2002: 240). According to the logic of the fat man, Leila’s youth and beauty is transitory, and is doomed to end in middle and old-age, in a process that will inevitably leave her cold and bitter. Viewed from this perspective, the entire ball takes on the appearance of an exercise in despair and futility, as individuals attempt to stave off the inevitable through participation in a momentary, superficial enjoyment.

Crucially, at least for the overall meaning of the story, Leila does not offer an active counter-argument to the fat man’s claims. Rather, although she is clearly dejected by he statements, and by his later disingenuous claim that she should not take him seriously, she is nonetheless overcome with a desire to dance, something that, in itself, manages to override anything meaningful in the fat man’s nihilism. Mansfield describes this dance as being initially stiff and awkward, but also as something that is able to take on an increasingly powerful sense of freedom as Leila progresses. She writes,

Very stiffly she [Leila] walked into the middle; very haughtily she put her hand on his [her new partner] sleeve. But in one minute, in one turn, her feet glided, glided And when her next partner bumped her into the fat man and he said, Pardon she smiled at him more radiantly than ever. She didn’t even recognize him again (Mansfield 2002: 241).

In this way, the story could be argued to end with an affirmation of youthful joy and happiness over and above an aged, resigned nihilism. This affirmation is especially powerful because, as Catherine McDermott argues, the fat man may be taken to be not simply a depiction of a kind of resigned old age, but also to be exist in the tradition of potentially lecherous older men, a literary trope that Mansfield inherited directly from Dostoevsky and other 19th century Russian novelists (McDermott 2012: 66). By portraying Leila’s happiness as possessing the potential to overcome the fat man’s nihilism, Mansfield appears to suggest that youth itself is able to overcome the hopelessness represented by and by lecherous intent.

At the same time, however, it is important to note that Mansfield does not offer any real solution to the problem that the fat man diagnoses. Indeed, it remains inevitable that Leila will age and that the man will, to a certain extent, be proved right. In this way, it is possible to understand the story as, in a similar manner to Marriage a la Mode, presenting a situation in which hope and youth is wrapped up with, and exists alongside, a situation of despair. Although the power of youth is undeniably strong, and is clearly able to negate an easy uncritical resignation, it is nonetheless not capable of changing the fundamental situation that this resignation describes. In both of these stories, therefore, Mansfield may be argued to be concerned with presenting women who inhabit certain social roles associated with romance, either as the young wife or as the young socialite, but who nonetheless maintain a critical degree relationship to the behaviors that they undertake. In both cases, Mansfield mixes a degree of despair or resignation concerning the roles that women must inevitably perform in socially mediated romantic situations with the potential for a kind of joyful, youthful energy to overcome this mood, even if only momentarily. Crucially, this distinction between youthful joy and despair is something that one may locate directly in Mansfield’s understanding of her own art and of her life.