Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Unexpected Must Happen’ and its Relation to Bliss

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 21, Issue 2, 1 October 1988, Page 87

Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Unexpected Must Happen’ and its Relation to Bliss

BY GARDNER MCFALL

A TRANSCRIPTION AND COMMENTARY

‘The Unexpected Must Happen’: A Transcription 1

Guy Gaythorn knocked the ash from his cigar end into the fire behind his back, restored the comfort to his lips, tilted his head further back if that were possible, & ballancing 2 himself on his toes for half a second proceeded [“]you are half witch, Judith, and half pussy cat my dear —that subtle combination which is so essentially femininef;] but if you were not so young, so completely childish —it is no use denying the fact, I should be seriously annoyed.”

The lady upon the opposite side of the table -picked- plucked a feather from her fan & blew it across the polished surface where it lay like a tiny swan on a dark miniature lake: 3 “Allow me to assure you, sir, that under the circumstances, I feel my action in this matter to be beyond reproach.” She suddenly rose, stretched out her white arms and looked at him, half laughing, half angry —from under her long lashes —“Why on earth, because in a weak moment I became engaged to you —am Ito regard you as the only Adam —Why the Garden of Eden, now a days, is simply stocked with them and they are like Penny-in-the-slot machines. Guy —they all fascinate me, and I want to find out about them all —So for heaven’s sake, don’t develop the middle aged, vulgar, jealous husband attitude, but leave me my adorable Macdowell the boy needs a woman —his father’s history you know —in peace.” The man made no reply for a moment. Then with a sudden movement, almost with fierceness he took his wife in his arms, kissed her passionately, then pushed her gently back into her seat. [“]This evening Judith we spend quietly & happily together. I know you obey me & in future remember that you belong to me[,] that your honor is my honor. We have argued quite long enough up 4 & quite Often enough upon this —to me —painful subject, Judith. I will have no more of it. Let us now spend a quiet evening together.” She was surprised, satisfied, soothed with the spontaneous passion of the man but a frightful fear had crept into her very blood. Why could he not leave her as he had intended, and meet his friends at the Admiralty Club —God! What would he say or do if the door were to open, as in a few moments it would open, and Cecil, eager —loving —excitable,

burst into the room. She could not forgive herself for her foolish action in giving him the duplicate key to her flat it was so lacking in dignity, it looked so bad, even though she knew it meant nothing—She clasped her hands convulsively. What could she do —how could she make Guy go What It was strongly evident that her husband would not leave her, to get him away from their room she must suggest go with him. This must be done. How! Suddenly a thought seized her & the relief that it brought lighted her face with what he- Guy interpreted as love. Moving quickly to the window she lifted the blind, & moonlight flooded the room & killed the firelight: “Guy, it is moonlight again, just as it was that happy night Why not take me for a let us walk for awhile” & her voice was full of trembling persuasion. “Do you want to Judith, [”] he said, [“]let us go —Life is too short for you and me to quarrel. Run and get on your coat & hat.[”] Swiftly she left the room, ran along the passage. She was standing in front of the mirror —buttoning her jacket when —was it fancy —it could not be reality —she heard the front door open & close, steps across the hall, then her husband’s voice loud and commanding —“You Cecil Macdowell.”

She stood motionless, helpless, listening intensely for further sounds. from the The painful thumping throbbing at her temples suggested some long forgotten melody which repeated & repeated itself maddeningly. But there came no sound from the sitting room. Then suddenly the door opened, the two men came out-talking excitedly, her husband paused to put on a coat & hat & the next moment —the hall door had clicked behind them & she was alone!

Commentary

‘The Unexpected Must Happen’ appears in Notebook 2 held at the Alexander Turnbull Library along with Mansfield’s notes of her 1907 Urewera journey. 5 The notebook also contains Mansfield’s reading notes from 1908, a poem beginning ‘This is Angelica / Fallen from Heaven’, and assorted vignettes and narratives, most notably ‘Leves Amores’ (known as ‘The Thistle Hotel’).

‘The Unexpected Must Happen’ dates from the early months of 1908 and provides insight into Mansfield’s increasing command of the art of invention. She writes in this notebook, in January 1908, a warning to those who would read all of her early work autobiographically, ‘I have the brain and also the inventive faculty! What else is needed?’ 6

‘The Unexpected Must Happen’ reveals the young Mansfield’s talent for heightened imagination; she would have been just twenty, writing about adult relationships she could not have experienced yet except through books. 7 It also stands as an unwitting, oblique exercise for the later mature story Bliss.

In the large design, both stories depend for their effect on a reversal of expectation. They employ the theme of illusion and reality, clarified,

paradoxically, by deception. In the case of ‘The Unexpected Must Happen’, it is Judith’s deception: she has given Cecil, her paramour, the key to her flat. In that of Bliss, it is Harry’s: he is having an affair with Pearl Fulton.

Judith Gay thorn’s surname embodies the oppositions in her nature. Guy claims she is ‘half witch . . . half pussy cat’; she looks at him ‘half laughing, half angry’. She is an early version of Bertha Young. They are both self-deluded, Judith by her power to allure, and Bertha by her vision of a perfect life. Judith is depicted as an attractive woman whose extramarital escapades stem from boredom within a precipitous marriage. Whatever her protestations, she uses other men to attract her husband’s attention. Similarly, Bertha in Bliss, only far more subtly and with greater emotional complexity, desires her husband when contemplated alongside Pearl, the fascinating ‘other’ woman. At the moment of their renewed interest in their respective spouses, Judith and Bertha are thwarted by the evidence that they are not essential to them. Bertha realizes that her husband Harry is involved with Pearl, the woman she herself has been drawn to, and Guy goes off congenially with Cecil, leaving Judith alone. In effect, Judith becomes the ‘forgotten melody’ throbbing in her brain. Where they once appeared to orchestrate events, Judith and Bertha are rendered victims of ‘the unexpected’.

Despite the brevity of Mansfield’s early text, it reveals elements that become full-blown virtues in Bliss: imagery, irony, and wordplay. Moonlight, fire, mirrors, and gardens appear in both stories, though Bliss manifests a more scrupulous mobilization of them. In particular, the pear tree in the garden unifies the story by serving as a projection of Bertha’s psyche. Her changing perceptions of it track an inner drama whose ending ironically contrasts the untouched, insensitive quality of the tree itself. Imagery in ‘The Unexpected Must Happen’, on the other hand, functions not as an essential structuring principle so much as an illustrative gesture toward the illusion and reality theme. To this end, the table has a ‘polished surface’, and the feather that Judith blows across it is likened to a ‘tiny swan on a dark miniature lake’. These images suggest that things are not what they seem.

The irony of events in ‘The Unexpected Must Happen’ is heightened as it is in Bliss through wordplay involving characters’ names, such as the punning of ‘gaythorn’ on ‘gay blade’, and various textual repetitions and variations. For example, Judith imagines Cecil entering the flat ‘eager —loving —excitable’, only to hear him leave with her husband ‘talking excitedly’. Fearing his untimely arrival, she thinks, ‘how could she make Guy go ... it was strongly evident that her husband would not leave . . . she must ... go with him. This must be done.’ The repetition of‘must’, the implied necessity, plays off against the title, which by the end of the story reveals its irony. Can it be

coincidence that Bertha in ‘Bliss’ is also seized by a sense of necessity, and is portrayed as ‘waiting for something . . . divine to happen . . . that she knew must happen . . . infallibly’? 8 To Mansfield’s credit, the ending of neither story is a gratuitous trick, but the culmination of signs that the careful reader will discern, even if only in retrospect. The disparity between appearance and reality appears in both stories from start to finish. Mansfield renders this in her deployment of the swan image as well as in her portrayal of Judith, who has given Cecil the key to her flat, ‘though it meant nothing’. As in Bliss , where Bertha’s repressed hysteria foreshadows the unsettling outcome, so in ‘The Unexpected Must Happen’, the text betrays its conclusion, though we must get there to see it.

There is no doubt that Bliss is the richer, deeper, more satisfying and accomplished story; that it succeeds in creating the two worlds of illusion and reality, of the conscious and unconscious that ‘The Unexpected Must Happen’ merely documents in plot and phrasing such as ‘was it fancy —it could not be reality’. Nevertheless, in this early story, Mansfield displays enough similar concerns with plot, theme, character, imagery, and irony to suggest that, at least on a subconscious level, ‘The Unexpected Must Happen’ was an early exercise for Bliss. The axiom underlying both stories is akin to, if not indeed influenced by George Meredith’s ‘Love’s Grave’ that ends, ‘Passions spin the plot / We are betrayed by what is false within.’ 9

REFERENCES 1 Mansfield, Katherine. [Notebook 2], 1907-09. qMS [1244] in Murry, John Middleton, Papers of Katherine Mansfield, 1901-1922. MS Group 38. Alexander Turnbull Library. Permission to publish the transcription has been granted by The Society of Authors, London, as the literary representative of the Estate of Katherine Mansfield. 2 This is Mansfield’s spelling. ‘The Unexpected Must Happen’, was written hurriedly in pencil, and reflects revisions at the time of creation which my transcription documents. Because of the speed at which it was written, punctuation is both sparse and inconsistent. The dash is Mansfield’s favourite punctuation mark here. A minimal amount of bracketed punctuation has been supplied but otherwise it is true to Mansfield’s text. The exclamation marks which Mansfield was fond of and which occur frequently in the manuscript version of Bliss, ampersands, and underlining of words are hers.

3 lam grateful to Margaret Scott for helping me decipher this image. Mansfield’s description reflects a re-combination of Urewera imagery contained in the same notebook composed a month or two before where she remarks on ‘the sky in the water like white swans on a blue mirror’ (p. 18 recto). We can see Mansfield in the process of building a particular storehouse of imagery and beginning to exercise her penchant for the miniature. While this storehouse did not alter dramatically over time, she increasingly perfected its use.

4 It looks as though Mansfield started to write ‘upon’, and then decided against it. 5 Katherine Mansfield, The Urewera Notebook, edited by lan A. Gordon (Oxford, 1978). 6 [Notebook 2], p. 44 verso. 7 This does not mean that Mansfield would have had no emotional understanding of what she was writing. She had an early sense of the disparity between appearance and reality and the inner and outer life. On 11 July 1907 she wrote to Arnold Trowell, ‘in reality my outer life is but a phantom life —a world of intangible meaningless gray shadow my inner life pulsates with sunshine and happiness.’ (Mansfield, Katherine. [Notebook 39], 1906-08, p. 23 verso. qMS [1243] in Murry, John Middleton. ATL. 8 Katherine Mansfield, The Stories of Katherine Mansfield, edited by Antony Alpers (Oxford, 1984), p. 305. 9 George Meredith in The Oxford Book ofiEnglish Verse, edited by A. T. QuillerCouch (Oxford, 1906), p. 941. Mansfield’s reading notes of 1908 suggest that she would have been familiar with Meredith’s work. By the time she wrote Bliss she certainly would have known this poem, for she had a copy of the Oxford anthology and read it, as her letters and journal make clear.