Here is some further food for thought. How do these critical snippets affect your reading of the story?
The experiment with the Fly by the Boss, so named because he appears to
be the boss of his little world and of the little life of the Fly who has
fallen into his inkpot, the boss as well over his employees Woodifield and
Macey and over his dead son (all are as flies to him), dramatizes both the plot
(the conflict between time and grief) and the theme (time conquers grief). At
the first stage of the experiment the Boss is to be equated with the Fly. He
is, ironically then, at once both boss and fly.
Robert Wooster Stallman “Mansfield's ‘The Fly,’” in The
Explicator, Vol. 3, No. 6, April, 1945, item 49
Celeste Turner Wright “Genesis of a Short Story,” in Philological
Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 1, January, 1955, pp. 91-6.
Stanley B. Greenfield “Mansfield's ‘The Fly,’” in The
Explicator, Vol. 17, No. 1, October, 1958, item 2.
“The Fly” seems to me to be unified by one predominant theme: death, its
inevitability, and man's resistance to it. The most significant single sentence
in the story occurs in the opening paragraph: “All the same, we cling to our
last pleasures as the tree clings to its last leaves.”
Pauline P. Bell “Mansfield's ‘The Fly’,” in The Explicator,
Vol. 19, No. 3, December, 1960, item 20.
Late in 1915 when Katherine Mansfield received the news that her brother
had been killed fighting in France, she wrote in her journal:
The present and the future mean nothing to me. I am no longer “curious”
about people; I do not wish to go anywhere; and the only possible value that
anything can have for me is that it should put me in mind of something that
happened or was when we were alive. … Supposing I were to die as I sit at this
table, playing with my Indian paper-knife, what would be the difference? No
difference. Then why don't I commit suicide? Because I feel I have a duty to
perform
John T. Hagopian “Capturing Mansfield's ‘Fly,’” in Modern
Fiction Studies, Vol. 9, No. 4, Winter, 1963-1964, pp. 385-90.
The chief characteristic of the boss in Katherine Mansfield's “The Fly”
(see EXP., April, 1945, III, 49; Feb., 1947, v, 32; May, 1947, v, 33;
Feb., 1954, XII, 27; Nov., 1955, XIV, 10; Oct., 1958, XVII, 2; and Dec., 1960,
XIX, 20) is, I think, his inability to recognize that others have a breaking
point. This is shown in his attitude toward the fly, toward Macey, toward Mr.
Woodifield, and toward his son. He does not intend to kill the fly; he only
admires its courage and its ability to free itself of ink. After the fly's
fourth soaking, he does not see that the fly has suffered all that it can, and
he encourages it with: “Come on. … Look sharp”
J. Rea “Mansfield's ‘The Fly,’” in The
Explicator, Vol. 23, No. 9, May, 1965, item 68.
Obviously
the boss stands for a superior controlling power—God, destiny, or fate—which in
capricious and impersonal cruelty tortures the little creature struggling under
this hand until it lies still in death. At the same time the boss is presented
as one who has himself received the blows of this superior power through the
death of his only son in the war.
Sylvia Berkman, from Katherine
Mansfield: A Critical Study, cited in Mary Rohrberger “Katherine Mansfield: ‘The
Fly,’” in Hawthorne and the Modern Short Story, Mouton and Company,
1966, pp. 68-74.
No other story of Katherine Mansfield has prompted such a critical
controversy.1 Many critics have proposed interesting
interpretations; yet the more one reads of the criticism, the more one realises
that the answer to the problem the story raises is not in fact found in just
one or another sentence, symbol or parallel inside or outside the story.
Critics seem to have been obsessed by the necessity to equate the fly with
either the boss, Woodifield, the boss's son, or the boss's grief.
Paulette Michel-Michot “Katherine Mansfield's ‘The Fly’:
An Attempt to Capture the Boss,” in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 11,
No. 1, Winter, 1974, pp. 85-92.
This much-explicated1 story is deservedly famous. It was
completed on 20th February, 1922 and published in ‘The Nation’ on 18th March in
the same year. Exceptionally short in length, it tells by implication much more
than what it states explicitly. The result is not only an extraordinary depth
and suggestiveness but also a puzzling obscurity. For, with many of the
suggestions left deliberately vague, the story becomes an enchanting, but
baffling riddle which lends itself to many conflicting and, sometimes, fanciful
interpretations.
Atul Chandra Chatterjee “1918-23; The Final Phase,” in The
Art of Katherine Mansfield, S. Chand & Company, 1980, pp. 234-321.
Greenfield's comment is an interesting observation, but I would like to know how he interprets the fly - it must surely represent something, as the story is named after it. However, maybe if the story wasn't named 'the Fly' but something like 'the Office' or 'Mr Woodifield', we wouldn't pay so much attention to it, and instead would focus on the symbolism of the 'new furniture' or on the relationship between the boss and Mr Woodifield. One way the criticism does affect my reading of the story is to focus me on the part with the fly, as if the rest is just setting the scene, and giving us information that will enable us to interpret the section with the fly.
ReplyDeleteMuch of the criticism directly contradicts each other, and I find it doesn't help me to clearly define or understand the story, but instead makes it more confusing, as more possibilities of the symbolism of the fly (does it represent the boss, Mr Woodifield, the boss's grief, the boss's son, all WW1 soldiers?) or the boss (fate? the fly?) are opened up. So maybe I agree most with Chatterjee's comment.
Sylvia Berkmen mentions how the boss 'stands for a superior controlling power' which reminds me of how Mansfield's choice of status and name for her main character is in fact ironic. 'The boss' specifically has the word 'the' as to imply there is only one boss which is himself. A 'boss' also insinuates that they are at the top of the social ladder, much like the concept of 'God' . Therefore it is ironic how he indeed has no control over 'the boy's death'.
ReplyDeleteInstead of seeing the author (Katherine Mansfield) as a open ended writer i she her as a more sombre and possibly depressed character. The pessimistic view that she shows through ' The Fly' only futhers my reasoning. I believe that, after reading John T. Hagopian's 'caputering the file', the death of her sibling may have in someway influenced the ending. Her inspiration that flowered form her own emotional encounter of a 'fly in a milk bottle'w leads me to believe that the fly and the boss is not only a representation of the fragility of human life compared to an omnipotent god, but also a reflection of her emotional state . These critics combined with the historical context very much distorts the view i had of the fly.
ReplyDeleteSylvia Berkman's view is on similar to my own interpretation, and in that respect does not warp my view futher.
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ReplyDelete"Supposing I were to die as I sit at this table, playing with my Indian paper-knife, what would be the difference? No difference. Then why don't I commit suicide? Because I feel I have a duty to perform"
ReplyDeleteWe think that "The Fly" must be at least partly an autobiographical reflection of Mansfield's depression after her brother's untimely death in WWI. In some ways this can be seen in the character of the Fly who is being tortured. Mansfield sees herself as a tortured soul elsewhere, as she says in a letter that she felt "like a fly who has been dropped into the milk-jug and fished out again, but is still too milky and drowned to start cleaning up yet.”
We can read the Boss as being sado-masochistic and trying to test his own emotional resilience by torturing the fly. J Rea supports this claim saying, "He does not intend to kill the fly; he only admires its courage and its ability to free itself of ink. After the fly's fourth soaking, he does not see that the fly has suffered all that it can, and he encourages it with: “Come on. … Look sharp”".
It's all too easy to interpret the Boss as some omnipotent force. We can easily see the story as an allegory of God and his son (Jesus) with the punishment of the Fly being God's externalisation of his own grief onto his people. Mansfield sees herself as the fly who has tried her best to overcome the grief but has now been emotionaly murdered by God. When she talks about suicicde in her personal writings this is a reflection of her complete grief. She seems to suggest that since she is already emotionally dead, she might as well as die: "Supposing I were to die as I sit at this table, playing with my Indian paper-knife, what would be the difference? No difference. Then why don't I commit suicide? Because I feel I have a duty to perform"
By Joe and Lois