Unearthing the Hidden: A Gynocritical Reading of Selected Short Stories by Katherine Mansfield

This study examines selected short stories by Katherine Mansfield within the context of Elaine Showalter’s gynocriticism, through its biological, linguistic, psychoanalytic, and cultural models. Unlike traditional feminist literary criticism, which was primarily concerned with the ways women were represented within patriarchal discourse, gynocriticism shifts the focus to women’s own voices, experiences, and artistic productions. It emphasizes the importance of examining female-authored texts valuing women’s unique experiences and voices. Mansfield’s fiction offers valuable material for examining female identity through a gynocritical lens. Her female characters are often portrayed as individuals confined by restrictive social roles such as motherhood, marriage, and domestic responsibilities with the conflict between their personal desires and socially imposed roles. Through her innovative use of literary techniques such as symbolism, stream of consciousness, and free indirect discourse, Mansfield critiques the social norms that confine women and limit their self-expression. This study argues that Mansfield’s stories, viewed through Showalter’s gynocritical framework, construct a female aesthetic that both mirrors the pressures women face in patriarchal society and illuminates the silenced, hidden, and overlooked dimensions of female identity, creativity, and subjectivity.