Bertha Young in “Bliss” is also suppressed in her role as a mother. She “stands like a poor little girl in front of the rich little girl with a doll” before the nanny, despite having authority as lady of the house. The restraints imposed upon her in her day to day living is made apparent when she is unable to express fully her love for her daughter, loving her baby in parts from “the neck as she bent” to “her exquisite toes” instead of loving her whole. In her role as a wife, she is unable to maintain a conversation with her husband over the phone, incapable of sharing her “bliss” and replies to her husband with “Entendu”, attempting to speak in a language that is not genuinely hers.
Similarly, the character of Beryl in “Prelude” is suppressed. She mentions her two selves in a stream of consciousness, alluding to her lack of personal identity, resulting from the suppression of being unmarried and isolated in the country. Beryl moans that “I am never my real self for a moment” and foresees herself as “an awful frump in a year or two”, reflecting her inner turmoil on being isolated and forced to only experience romance with her imaginary “dark and slender young man”. Ironically, Beryl is suppressed by being unmarried, while her sister Linda is suppressed by her awkwardness in her role as a mother and wife.
Just as Beryl is ‘never her real self’, Bertha is never acquires ‘her real opinion’, being dependant on borrowed phrases such as “Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?” She compares her body to a fiddle entrapped in a case in a simile, alluding to her emotional isolation and suppression, despite convincing herself to be “overcome by a feeling of bliss” Her refusal to acknowledge reality is made evident when “she hardly dared to look into the cold mirror”, choosing to live in her ignorant blissful state over recognizing the truth. Continuing on the subject of music, Bertha declares twice that “it is a pity that nobody plays” the piano. Metaphorically, Bertha’s body is the musical instrument of the piano and fiddle, and the music she wishes to hear is in fact the intimacy between her and her husband, relating to her suppressed state within her marriage.
The ideas of fear and suppression link the characters Kezia and Linda in “Prelude”. Kezia’s encounter with “IT” is described when she explores the empty house when “the day flickered out and the night came. Suddenly she was still frightened. But IT was just behind her, waiting. Likewise, Linda encounter with “THEY” in her bedroom draws parallels with her daughter’s fear of “IT”, relating to Linda’s fear of the bearing children and Stanley’s deep desire to have a son. “They were there, they knew she was frightened”. The similarities between “IT” and “THEY” creates a connection between Kezia and Linda, allowing the reader to question if Kezia will learn from her mother’s suppression or if she would follow and become suppressed herself in the future. The anonymity of the pronouns “IT and THEY”, also create a sense of oppression, both mother and daughter unable to identify clearly the source of their fears.
Katherine Mansfield also presents ideas of how socially dictated patterns affect Bertha’s perception of “Bliss”, in turn suppressing her unknowingly. Mansfield satirizes the artistic middle class of her time through the portrayal of Bertha’s “modern, thrilling friends”. At the dinner party, the dialogue between the guests allows the reader to conclude that Bertha lives in a mundane society, where topics such as “the dreadful experience of driving through eternity in a timeless taxi”, or how “tomato soup is so dreadfully eternal” is often discussed. The absurd conversations between Bertha’s guests who she considers to be “so keen on social questions and modern” reflect the restraints of living in her superficial and mundane society. The abrupt ending of “Bliss” with the pear tree “standing as lovely as ever and still” compels the reader to question whether Bertha breaks free from her suppression upon realizing the emptiness of her marriage and life, reflecting Mansfield’s ideas that people don’t always learn from their realizations.
By providing her readers insight into the minds of her characters, Mansfield explores the theme of suppression of women in her short stories. By the end of her short stories “Prelude” and “Bliss”, she encourages her readers to contemplate on the nature of bliss, fear, and ultimately suppression.