A true sense of place
Can you guess the setting of this short story from its evocative opening lines?
From ‘The Woman at the Store’ (1912) by Katherine Mansfield
All that day the heat was terrible. The wind blew close to the ground; it rooted among the tussock grass, slithered along the road, so that the white pumice dust swirled in our faces, settled and sifted over us and was like a dry-skin itching for growth on our bodies. The horses stumbled along, coughing and chuffing. The pack horse was sick—with a big, open sore rubbed under the belly. Now and again she stopped short, threw back her head, looked at us as though she were going to cry, and whinnied. Hundreds of larks shrilled; the sky was slate colour, and the sound of the larks reminded me of slate pencils scraping over its surface. There was nothing to be seen but wave after wave of tussock grass, patched with purple orchids and manuka bushes covered with thick spider webs.
Jo rode ahead. He wore a blue galatea shirt, corduroy trousers and riding boots. A white handkerchief, spotted with red—it looked as though his nose had been bleeding on it—was knotted round his throat. Wisps of white hair straggled from under his wideawake—his moustache and eyebrows were called white—he slouched in the saddle, grunting. Not once that day had he sung
"I don't care, for don't you see,
My wife's mother was in front of me!"
It was the first day we had been without it for a month, and now there seemed something uncanny in his silence. Jim rode beside me, white as a clown; his black eyes glittered, and he kept shooting out his tongue and moistening his lips. He was dressed in a Jaeger vest, and a pair of blue duck trousers, fastened round the waist with a plaited leather belt. We had hardly spoken since dawn. At noon we had lunched off fly biscuits and apricots by the side of a swampy creek.
What we love about this passage…
With the evocations of heat and dryness, it is clear that this is not the most idyllic view of rural New Zealand. This arid atmosphere adds to what we can gather is a certain tension amongst the riding party themselves. Mansfield paints the scene in such precise terms—the native manuka bushes, the music-hall song, the clothing—that it quickly establishes the narrator as a close observer. This will be important to the rest of the story (particularly the end), which you can read here.
About the Author
Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was writer of short fiction who lived a fascinating, though all too short, life. Born in New Zealand, she was educated in London from about 1900 and fell in love with the city's cosmopolitan flavor and bohemian lifestyle. Devoted to its artistic world, Mansfield permanently emigrated there, meeting many of the major figures associated with modernism and publishing her stories in some of the most important literary magazines. Though once overshadowed in the popular imagination by figures such as Virginia Woolf–with whom she had a friendly rivalry–she has long had a loyal group of followers. Even Woolf came round: upon hearing of Mansfield's untimely death from tuberculosis in 1923, she privately recorded, ‘no point in writing … Katherine won't read it.’
To read alongside…
Mansfield’s description of her native scenery reminds us of her contemporaries Mary Hunter Austin, one of the first modern woman writers of the American West, and Willa Cather. Read our past newsletter featuring these works below.
You can read more of Mansfield’s remarkable stories in our past newsletters: ‘Something Childish, but Very Natural’ and her short story ‘Bliss’:
Celebrating Katherine Mansfield
The New Zealand-born writer died a hundred years ago this month. This excerpt comes from ‘Bliss,’ one of Mansfield’s best-known short stories, about a young married woman preparing for a dinner party.
You may also be interesting in reading her disturbing and fascinating story ‘The Fly’ on our sister project’s website: The Ten Minute Book Club.
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