2023-09-14 02:44:43
Biography
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Henriette Levillain delves into the adventures of the New Zealand writer, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 34 without ever having managed to stay still.
The question divides criticism, less anecdotal than it seems (since it implies knowing both lives and works intimately, at the same time as it questions a floating notion): Katherine Mansfield and Were Virginia Woolf friends? In this book devoted to the first, Henriette Levillain reserves one of her thirty chapters for this contrasting relationship in which it is appropriate for her to immediately dismiss “desire and physical love” (Mansfield then apparently preferred male partners and Woolf had not yet met Vita Sackville-West, who would become her mistress).
Not in love, and no sweeter comrades. “A female friendship,” writes Levillain, “is nourished by winks and knowing laughter, by confidences and trust, by shared sorrows and comfort.” The definition is certainly questionable, but indeed none of that between these two. Let’s talk instead about fruitful competition, a certain jealousy (Woolf phrased it as such), a mutual respect. “Neither lovers nor friends, therefore, but sisters,” says the biographer, because they are united on the ground of writing rather than on that of the intimate.
“Immediate and strong sensations”
Katherine Mansfield first visited the Woolfs in 1917. The couple wanted to publish their short story “Prelude” at the Hogarth Press, their newly founded home.
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