Katherine Mansfield Excels “in expressing a child’s sense of things” (MacCarthy). How does Mansfield present childhood in “Sun and Moon” and “Prelude”?
Mansfield presents childhood as a time where everything in the world is fascinating and as a time where one is allowed to be ignorant and innocent, as well as a time during which many things can seem violent or intimidating.
One way in which Mansfield presents childhood is as a fairy-tale. For example, in the story “Sun and Moon”, Sun is fascinated by the beauty of the dinner table, when it turns out to be like a mask hiding the ugly truth. He is particularly taken with the ice-house: “Oh! Oh! Oh! It was a little house.” This house resembles the house from Hansel and Gretel, and this fairy-tale is about a pair of innocent children being captured by a witch; slightly sinister. At the end of the story, Sun is taken into the dining room by his parents and the ice-house is all smashed: “broken – broken – half melted away.” This is upsetting for Sun, but what is more upsetting is when his sister, Moon, eats the little nut that is the door handle, because he was so enthralled by it earlier on. What this tells us about the way Mansfield is trying to represent childhood is as a time when everything seems overwhelming, and that parents do not always understand their children, because Sun is sent to his room by his father for being upset about the events.
Mansfield also presents childhood as mysterious and exciting. For instance, in “Prelude”, Kezia walks through the garden, looking at the flowers, and is enchanted by their beauty and form: “There were clumps of fairy bells, and all kinds of geraniums…and all kinds of little tufty plants she had never seen before.” This shows that Mansfield wants to portray childhood as a time of exploration and discovery. Kezia decides to make her Granma a present with the flowers and plants she has found, also showing that children like to be noticed, and Kezia does not get the attention from her mother, so always turns to her Granma. This shows that life is different for many people, because Kezia’s situation is not necessarily the norm – her Granma looking after her instead of a nanny or her mother.
Another way in which Mansfield presents childhood in her stories, is as a time of ignorance. In “Sun and Moon”, the two children are watching their parents’ function be set up and Sun sees the piano tuner tuning the piano, and says: “Sometimes he just started to play and then he jumped up again and looked inside. Sun hoped he wasn’t the concert.” Sun does not know that the man is the piano tuner, but knows that he is not the concert because he is not playing very well. The reader would not think that Sun is stupid because he is only a child, so is therefore allowed to be ignorant. This said, the fact that he is so observant slightly balances out the ignorance, because another child might not notice the tuner in the first place. This shows that childhood could be a time to think about the world rather than being thrown into it.
At the same time, Mansfield also represents childhood as a time of innocence. In “Sun and Moon” again, they are woken by their parents’ party and then their parents find them. “Sun and Moon” do not seem to notice that their parents were drunk, and were just happy to have some attention for once; “She only had time to say: ‘Out of my way, children!’” This also shows the reader that the children were like objects that were just “in the way” of whatever she was in the middle of doing. The children are also incredibly innocent in “Prelude”, when Pat is killing the duck in front of them. Kezia does not seem overly phased until the duck is actually dead, when she cries to Pat: “Put head back!” Telling the reader that she has only now realised what Pat was doing. The reader can also see from this that young children are much more easily lead that adults and older children, because if someone older was told they were going to witness a duck being slaughtered, and they did not want to see it, they would probably say something to get away from the situation, but, as demonstrated here, Kezia did not know the situations, and therefore could not stand up against it.
Overall, Mansfield presents childhood as a new and exciting time where everything is there to be discovered and explored, as seen in both “Sun and Moon” and in “Prelude”.