"Germany is the home of the family": a criticism of gender roles in Katherine Mansfield's "In a German Pension"

Abstract

The present article departs from the concept of "mimicry" or "masquerade", theorised by such feminist critics as Joan Riviere (1929), Luce Irigaray (1985), or Mary Ann Doane (1991). This implies that women deliberately assume the feminine style and posture assigned to them within patriarchal discourse with a subversive rather than merely imitative intention by means of what Gerard Genette calls "saturation". In particular, this study focuses on Katherine Mansfield's satire of gender stereotypes in Germany. Through this mimicry, Mansfield aims to prove that such stereotypes go beyond national boundaries and affect the people of different countries similarly-in this case Germany and England. The selected texts are two short stories included within her early collection In a German Pension (1911): "The Modem Soul" and "Germans at Meat".