Mansfield Reality Overcoming Blissful Ignorance

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Reality Overcoming Blissful Ignorance Dynamic characters in literature illustrate a change in their character throughout the story at one point or another. On the other hand, static characters do not experience a change in their particular character and, more or less, stay the same. In Katherine Mansfield’s “Bliss”, Bertha Young, the protagonist, exemplifies a dynamic character that undergoes change and transformation around static characters. Bertha believes that “the lovely pear tree with its wide open blossoms as a symbol of her own life” (Mansfield 493). The pear tree and its blossoms symbolize all the wonderful things life offers her such as her youth, love for her husband, financial stability as well as her cosmopolitan friends. However, the pear tree never changes but Bertha’s interactions with the Nanny of her son Little B, her husband Harry, and her newfound friend Pearl Fulton provide a depiction of how Bertha experiences a change in her character. Each of these characters contributes to different phases of Bertha’s ongoing transformation. Through three different static characters, Mansfield is able to depict Bertha in the process of changing. Bertha’s relationship with Little B’s Nanny illustrates the initial state of mind of Bertha’s character. In one instance, Nanny tells Bertha about Little B’s afternoon at the park where “a big dog came along and put its head on [Nanny’s] knee and [Little B] clutched its ear” (491). There is obvious apprehension in Bertha as “Bertha wanted to ask if it wasn’t rather dangerous to let her clutch at a strange dog’s ear” (492). However, “she did not dare to” (492) question Nanny. Mansfield emphasizes Nanny’s control over Little B when Bertha receives a phone call and Nanny comes “back in triumph and [seizes] her Little B” (492). Bertha’s subservience to Nanny depicts how she lacks control of her own child. Her

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