The Doll's House (short story)

The Doll's House is a 1922 short story by Katherine Mansfield. It was first published in "The Nation & the Anthenaeum" on 4 February 1922, and later appeared in "The Dove's Nest and Other Stories". [Katherine Mansfield, "Selected Stories", Oxford World's Classics, explanatory notes] An alternative title used by Mansfield in other editions was "At Karori". [Katherine Mansfield, "Selected Stories", Oxford World's Classics, explanatory notes]

Plot introduction

The Burnell children receive a doll's house from a neighbor and they show it off to their school friends.

Plot summary

Mrs Hay has given a doll's house to the Burnell children; it is minutely described, with especial emphasis on a lamp inside of it, which the youngest girl, Kezia, thinks is the best part of the doll's house of all. The next morning they cannot wait to show it off to their school friends; Isabel bossily says she will be the one to decide who is allowed to come and see it in the house as she is the eldest. The Kelveys, two poor girls, Lil and Our Else, will not be allowed to do so; Aunt Beryl talks Kezia out of letting them. Later, Isabel and two of her friends, Emmie Cole and Lena Logan, taunt the Kelveys about their low social status. Soon afterwards Kezia impulsively decides to show them the house anyway; Aunt Beryl, worried about an insisting letter from a certain Willie Brent, walks in on them, shoos away the Kelveys, scolds Kezia, then feels better. The Kelveys have managed to see the lamp though.

Major themes

*Class Consciousness : the school is portrayed as a melting pot of all social classes, and the Kelveys as the lowest of the low. The other children are discouraged from talking to them; they are outcasts.

Literary significance

The text is written in the modernist mode, with minute details and haphazard narrative voices.

References from other works

A continuation of The Doll's House called "The Washerwoman's Children" written by "Witi Ihimaera", depicting Our Else later on in life as a Justice in London, coming back to Karori for a jubilee at her school.

Footnotes

External links

* [http://www.lamaquinadeltiempo.com/mansfield/04dollh.htm Full text]