International Journal Of Language, Literature And Culture(IJLLC)

Katherine Mansfield is an important figure in contemporary short fiction for her originality and her handling of complex themes. Her stories often explore the inner lives of women and reveal the limits imposed by social norms and patriarchal structures that shape their identities. Mansfield's less easily classifiable characters question these boundaries and challenge readers to rethink women's places in public and private domains. Mansfield's writing uses new ways of telling a story and gently shows us what it is like to be human. Her short stories often examine the link between personal identity and the social systems that influence how individuals think, act, and understand themselves. Women in Mansfield's fiction are confined to the domestic sphere, a marital relationship, a family hierarchy, or social institutions that regulate their desires and restrict their liberty. However, Mansfield does not depict female experience solely in terms of overt conflict or direct political protest. Instead, she demonstrates the functioning of patriarchal power through silences, gestures, memories, symbolic objects, fragmented conversations, and moments of psychological revelation. This paper examines the representation of female identity and patriarchal constraints in Bliss, The Garden Party, The Daughters of the Late Colonel, Miss Brill, and The Singing Lesson. The study explores the effects of marriage, domestic authority, social class, economic insecurity, and cultural expectations on women's identities. It draws on feminist literary criticism, the concept of gender as a social system rather than a social construct, and theories of modernist consciousness. In Bliss, the illusion of marital happiness experienced by Bertha Young is shattered when she discovers the emotional and sexual infidelity underlying her marriage. In The Garden Party, Laura Sheridan's growing social consciousness challenges the standards of her privileged family, although her awakening remains unresolved. The maiden sisters in The Daughters of the Late Colonel, Josephine and Constantia, suffer long-term psychological effects of their father's paternal domination. This demonstrates how authority can persist through internalized fear, even after the authority figure has died. Miss Brill exposes the vulnerability of a socially isolated woman whose imaginative selfhood is destroyed by public humiliation, while The Singing Lesson depicts the relationship between female emotional life and dependence on male approval. In these stories, Mansfield questions the idea that traditional feminine roles provide women with fixed identities or genuine contentment. The paper argues that her modernist form and feminist insight are inseparable. By rendering women's inner lives complex, contradictory, and worthy of sustained attention, Mansfield reveals the limitations of patriarchal society and makes visible the struggle for an authentic female self.