The text under analysis is an extract from “Fueille d’album”, which is written by Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry. She was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. Her stories often focus on moments of disruption and frequently open rather abruptly. Among her best-known stories are "The Garden Party", "The Daughters of the Late Colonel" and "The Fly".
“Feuille d'Album” is a 1917 short story. It was first published in the New Age on 20 September 1917 under the title of An Album Leaf. A revised version later appeared in Bliss and Other Stories.
The personage’s characterization is managed with great depth of insight. Main character of the story is a young painter whose appearance evokes mixed feelings. While describing him Mrs. Mansfield uses direct and indirect methods of characterization. From the extract it’s quite hard to judge whether he is static or dynamic. But we can easily say that he is a stock character, because he is very recognizable. The author wants to show an image of “painter” which will be familiar to readers. She tries to endow her hero with such characteristics as inscrutability, strangeness and uncommonness. The language of the writer is very rich and full of various kinds of stylistic devices. They help the reader to picture the main character. For example, the epithet “impossible” and the antithesis “With absolutely nothing to say for himself. And such a weight” describe him as a mysterious and unusual person. Also, with a help of these stylistic devices author takes pains to tell the reader that it is hard to describe the main character by words. Moreover, Katherine Mansfield uses the epithet “too shy” and the simile “like the tortoise stove” show that the hero is quite close person and has his own inner world. The following