"The Singing Lesson" by Katherine Mansfield

"The Singing Lesson" by Katherine Mansfield (1922, 10 pages)

The Reading Life Katherine Mansfield Project

"The Singing Lesson" by Katherine Mansfield (1888 to 1923) appears in the 1922 collection of her work, The Garden Party and Other Stories.    No location is given for this story but we can assume it is meant to be Wellington.      I really like this story.   It is  a lot of fun.   I hope I have been able to convey in part that  one of the main reasons I am reading Katherine Mansfield's stories is just that doing so is a lot of fun.    

The lead character in "The Singing Lesson" is Miss Meadows.   She is the singing teacher in an elementary school for girls.    The natural beauty of her native New Zealand was never far back in  Mansfield's consciousness and the use of the name "Meadows" is no accident in this story full of images of simple natural beauty.    The "theme" of the story (or one of them) is how one's mood affects what one perceives.    Miss Meadows's  mood goes up and down in the story based on how her boyfriend seems to feel about her.  The narrative intelligence behind the story is both sympathetic with Miss Meadows and mocking of her at the same time.     There is one line in the story that I really liked:    "Everything about her was sweet, pale, like honey. You would not have been surprised to see a bee caught in the tangles of that yellow hair".

This story can be read online at the New Zealand Electronic Text Center.

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