英美短篇小-说Unit-7-An-Ideal-Family.ppt

单击此处编辑母版标题样式,单击此处编辑母版文本样式,第二级,第三级,第四级,第五级,*,Katherine Mansfield,Unit 7,An Ideal Family,Major Works,In a German Pension(1911),The Woman at the store(1912),The prelude(1918),Bliss and Other Stories(1920),Garden Party and Other Stories(1922),At the Bay(1922),The Canary(1922),The Fly(1922),The Doves Nest,and Other stories(1923),Something Childish(1924),Brief introduction of Katherine Mansfield,Katherine Mansfield has acquired an international reputation as a writer of short stories,poetry,letters,journals and reviews.Her work has been translated into more than 25 languages.She was born in Wellington,New Zealand,into a middle-class colonial family.Her father was an ambitious businessman and her mother was a fastidious and delicate woman.,At 19,Mansfield left New Zealand and settled in the United Kingdom,where she became a friend of modernist writers such asD.H.LawrenceandVirginia Woolf.In 1917 she was diagnosed withextra pulmonarytuberculosis,which led to her death at the age of 34.,The New Dawn,Katherine Mansfield was one of a“new dawn”in English literature with T S Elliot,James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.She was associated with the brilliant group of writers who made the London of the period the centre of the literary world.,Significance,Mansfields stories were the first of significance in English to be written without a conventional plot.,Supplanting the strictly structured plots of her predecessors in the genre(Edgar Allan Poe,Rudyard Kipling,H.G.Wells),Mansfield concentrated on one moment,a crisis or a turning point,rather than on a sequence of events.,The plot is secondary to mood and characters.The stories are innovative in many other ways.They feature simple things-a dolls house or a charwoman.Her imagery,frequently from nature,flowers,wind and colors,set the scene with which readers can identify easily,.,Themes of Her Works,human isolation,the questioning of traditional roles of men and women in society,the conflict between love and disillusionment,idealism and reality,beauty and ugliness,joy and suffering and the inevitability of these paradoxes,Oblique narration(influenced by Chekhov but certainly developed by Mansfield)includes the use of symbolism-the dolls house lamp,the fly,the pear tree-hinting at the hidden layers of meaning.Suggestion and implication replace direct detail.,“Looking back,I imagine I was always writing.Twaddle it was too.But better far write twaddle or anything,anything,than nothing at all.”,Katherine Mansfield,letter to Ottoline Morrell(January 1922),An Ideal Family,An Ideal Family,was written byKatherine Mansfieldand first published in the literary magazine the,Sphere,on August 20,1921 and later incorporated into,The Garden Party,and Other Stories,in 1922.,Set in New Zealand,possibly in Wellington,An Ideal Family,is an,examination of self-worth,within a family social structure as seen through the eyes of an aging patriarch.,Mansfield,ever the modernist,often experimented with structure and narrative.,Plot,S,ummary,Mr.Neave,a successful businessman,is reluctant to leave his profession and only source of true identity.His home life is dominated by his family,who he barely recognizes anymore,and he feels both unwelcome and out of place in their frivolous world of dinners and parties.Mr.Neave prided himself on his sense of duty and committed work ethic,which allowed for a bourgeois life of luxury for himself and his family.,Now Mr.Neave sees his wife and adult children as if for the first time,realizing that he does not know them as well as he should and resents their dominate presence in his home.Life has passed him by.He isolated himself from his family in order to build his business,an investment that enabled him to successfully provided his family with everything they desired.,Writing,T,echniques,Although the story appears,structure-less,the third person narrative,and the,internal monologue,of the protagonist,Mr.Neave,centers the plot,s progression around the inner struggle of the main character as he comes to terms with his pending retirement.,The third person narrative supports the plot,allowing the reader an aerial view of Mr.Neave,s circumstances as well as intimate access to his inner thoughts as he navigates life outside of his office.,Theme,：,d,uty and responsibility,Duty and responsibility,are important themes in the overall text,usually in association with a character like Mr.Neave who prides himself on his work ethic.,Mr.Neave was motivated to work hard in order to support his family and to accommodate their extravagant lifestyle.Often complimented on his“ideal family”,Mr.Neave thought of his wife and children as an extension of his success in the business world.,Having reached his own high standards he is disappointed by his childrens lack of discipline and ambition.He is especially disappointed in his son,Harold.Mansfield uses,effeminate language,to describe Harolds appearance.,Theme：duty and responsibility,Mr.Neave thinks his son is unnaturally beautiful for a man with full lips and eyelashes.Some scholars believe this is an indication of bisexuality,which would have been most distressing from Mr.Neave,s conservative viewpoint.,Mr.Neave believes Harold has been overly petted and pampered by the women in his life,especially by his mother and sisters.,Theme：Loneliness,Loneliness,is an excellent theme of this great short story.However,it appears that the loneliness of Mr.Neave is mostly to do with his age.He is isolated by his tiredness,and the way that the rest of his family treat him.,Also,there is a real sense that he is somewhat patronised by his daughters,wife and son.Notice how the story starts with Mr.Neave insisting that his son is not ready to take over the business.,Theme：awareness,The ending of the story is also interesting as Mansfield appears to be exploring the theme of,awarenes,s,.,Mr Neave,after he wakes from his dream,seems to realise that he doesn,t really know his family.Due to his preoccupation with having a successful business Mr,.,Neave has never taken the opportunity to appreciate his family.Whether Mr,.,Neave will take the opportunity to spend time with his family(and give up work)is never known.,Some critics argue that Mansfield,by having Charles standing in the light(symbolic of an angel)as he tends to Mr Neave and having Mr Neave say,“,I,”,m coming,I,m coming at the end of the story is suggesting that it is too late for Mr Neave.If anything Mr Neave,s life could soon be over and he may never get the opportunity to really know his family.,Gender,R,elations,Gender relations,in,An Ideal Family,are very interesting.Mansfield has a talent for,realism,and masterfully illustrates various points of view on marriage and family in her collected works.She is especially adept at,creating sympathy for characters,like Mr.Neave who would otherwise seems unsavory in the eyes of the opposite sex.Preoccupied with his work,Mr.Neave leaves the management of his home to his wife and adult daughters.In doing so he relinquishes any authority in the home and once he succumbs to the inevitability of age,his family has no senior place for him in the home.He is admonished by his daughter for walking home alone and over a long distance,suggesting that he is too old to do so.,Gender,R,elations,His wife supports this decision momentarily but does not argue the point.Instead she greets her husband and although they sit side by side it is clear that she is the head of the household and he a guest.,Their relationship is stilted and almost impersonal.,Mr.Neave,similarly,feels disconnected from his daughters who he is surprised to see have grown into very different women in comparison to their behavior as children.He is easily bullied by them to dress for dinner and is just as easily forgotten by them when he falls asleep in his room.Despite Mr.Neaves greatest attempts to prove himself-worthy of his familys attention and admiration,his physical exhaustion outweighs his intentions and he falls asleep twice in a short amount of time.,Gender,R,elations,Feeling both lost and unappreciated within his family unit,Mr.Neave retreats into sleep and dreams of an old man walking up an endless flight of stairs.,This surreal imagery is used to symbolize,Mr.Neaves growing anxiety about his retirement and the unease he feels about the life he has led,.Perhaps Mr.Neave feels he has failed his family by putting his business first.Mr.Neave finds it difficult to distinguish himself from his work and now that he will eventually spend most of his time at home,he finds that he is dreading the transition and fears he has no place of honor within his familys social structure.,Symbol,One repeated symbol that appears in this tale is that of an old withered man:,And somewhere at the back of everything he was watching a little withered ancient man climbing up endless flights of stairs.Who was he?,Symbol,This is a symbol that occurs again and again when Mr.Neave is feeling tired of life and forgotten by his wife and children.Clearly,therefore,one of the principal themes of this story is age and how we accept it,and how often this is a massive struggle,as symbolized by Mr.Neaves stubborn refusal to give over his business to his son and his insistence to walk to and from work.,Responsive questions：,1.How does the author express alienation in this short story?,2.What are Katherine Mansfields artistic features?,3.Discuss the significance of marriage demonstrated in the story.,The End,Thank You,