Page 135 - Student: dazed And Confused

But Dubliners is not direct autobiography. Yet it is still used to hint at his own
character and in no story does it show more than A Little Cloud. Work, class, love are all

dealt with in the other short stories but family and friends make a man. These are the people
he relies on and trusts to support his ventures in life. Little Chandler has his epiphany

towards the end - that the ones he once depended on are not constant in their affections. The
story also touches upon his insecurity over writing, his ambition - and it is even harder to say

that this is pure fiction. The story may not use I and Joyce may have created a new character

to play his part, but he definitely owns the work. They are his words and it is, after all, his
name on the front cover.

It is difficult to argue that any work belongs in any fixed place but particularly so in
the case of ‘Je Ne Parle Pas Francais’ by Katherine Mansfield. Another short story, it follows

a writer as he meets another man, Dick, and his lady friend, Mouse. Dick persuades Raoul,

the narrator, to send a letter to his mother as Mouse admits that things are not good. He later
reads out a letter in which Dick is leaving Mouse. Raoul remarks that he never saw her

again. This appears to be a straight-forward story of unfulfilled ambition and of one person
being hauled into the real world when he would much prefer to observe it. Raoul begins by

talking about his favoured cafe and its atmosphere.; ‘ I do not know why I have such a

fancy for this cafe. It’s dirty and sad, sad’ (K Mansfield, p60, 1920). This makes it
relevant to any spin a reader may put on it as we know that many of our favourite writers

composed works in a cafe, or featured them prevalently within the pages. Can we assume
that Mansfield owns her work as Joyce does because she discusses her surroundings and a

writer who could represent herself? Perhaps so and perhaps not. She presents the work in a
much lighter and slightly vaguer fashion, making it less personal and more open to

interpretation by the reader.

‘Mansfield... was always acting a part, or going off on
the tops of buses to Poplar to see what ‘the people’

looked like, presumably putting her real self down on
paper somewhere.’

(A Alpers, p146, 1980)

The story belongs to the common reader because, as we see from the quote, they
provided the inspiration for it. By putting her thoughts, words, experiences to paper, is it not

possible that she was indeed writing for us as readers? Immediately, the reader can relate to
the title Je Ne Parle Pas Francais, a common concern about not speaking the language.

Perhaps, even all those years ago, Mansfield was attempting to give voice to her audience and