“The present is the only time: Mansfield’s ‘Marriage à la Mode’ and the inability to change”

Katherine Mansfield’s ‘Marriage à la Mode’ (1921) can be regarded as the homage she pays both to William Hogarth’s satirical series of paintings and to Chekhov’s ‘The Grasshopper’ (1892), which also describes a failed marriage. The theme is further underlined by intertextual allusions to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. While depicting the corrupting influence of fashionable society, thus reasserting the moralistic message of Hogarth’s cycle, the story focuses on the heroine’s ultimate inability to change, despite a transitory moment of critical self- awareness and genuine empathy for her less worldly husband. Many of Mansfield’s stories famously pivot on what she called ‘the blazing moment’, a burst- through of heightened consciousness. But this flash of insight does not invariably result in lasting effects, as shown in this story, where the superficial lure of the heroine’s trendy, artistic friends has the better over her inmost feelings.