Marriage a la Mode

“In the old days, of course, he would have taken a taxi off to a decent toyshop and chosen them something in five minutes. But nowadays they had Russian toys, French toys, Serbian toys – toys from God knows where. It was over a year since Isabel had scrapped the old donkeys and engines and so on because they were so ‘dreadfully sentimental’ and ‘so appallingly bad for the babies’ sense of form.’”

This passage is an example of exposition, filling in background information about the story’s two main characters, William and Isabel. In particular, it conveys Isabel’s attitude toward old toys and her concern for the “right” aesthetic education to be imparted to the children. The toys are used to symbolize not only their shifting family dynamic but the changing world in the postwar era; the old, provincial toys have been replaced by new ones from all over the world, representing the increasingly international nature of the world.

“The new Isabel looked at him, her eyes narrowed, her lips apart. […] She laughed in the new way.”

The adjective “new” is used to describe Isabel and her way of laughing. Isabel’s new personality has been hinted at as snobby and materialistic, and Katherine Mansfield uses imagery here to enhance that characterization through the laugh. Her “narrowed” eyes—a description often used to describe someone scrutinizing or mocking something—foreshadow her mean behavior toward William.

“The familiar dull gnawing in his breast quietened down. […] The exquisite freshness of Isabel. When he had been a little boy, it was his delight to run into the garden after a shower of rain and shake the rose-bush over him. Isabel was that rose-bush, petal-soft, sparkling and cool. And he was still that little boy. But there was no running into the garden now, no laughing and shaking. The dull, persistent gnawing in his breast started again.”

Mansfield uses juxtaposition here, contrasting William’s nostalgia for his childhood and love for his wife with his anxiety. He associates Isabel with the sweetness of his childhood through this rosebush