Patterns of Time and the Maternal in the Short Stories of Elizabeth Bishop and Katherine Mansfield

Abstract

This chapter discusses aspects of rhythm, poetic form, time and the archival in Bishop’s prose and is organised around a discussion of the ethics of the mother-daughter relationship in the autobiographical story, ‘In the Village.’ Bishop’s short stories are analysed in terms of poetic prose and as prose poems. This resonates with Katherine Mansfield’s lyrical, impressionistic experiments in the short story and her ideas about form and formlessness in narrative. Bishop’s interest in representations of time, memory and a modernist aesthetic in narrative prose are persuasively articulated in her key critical essays (‘Time’s Andromedas’, ‘Dimensions for a Novel’). The chapter ultimately proposes that Mansfield can be understood as a significant influence on Bishop’s prose style, helping her to determine her own original fictional ‘voice’ as well as her structural and thematic concerns in prose.