Analysis of an extract from ‘The Singing Lesson’

With despair cold, sharp despair buried deep in her heart uniform a wicked knife, Miss Meadows, in cap and gown and carrying a little nightstick, trod the cold corridors that led to the music hall. Girls of all ages, rosy from the air, and scintillant everywhere with that gleeful excitement that comes from running to school on a fine autumn morning, hurried, skipped, fluttered by from the hollow class-rooms came a quick drumming of voices a bell rang a voice give care a bird cried, Muriel. And then there came from the staircase a tremendous knock-knock-knocking.Someone had dropped her dumbbells. The Singing Lesson by Katherine Mansfield is a short fib written with elements hinting at the modernist movement of the late 19th century. We are instantly informed of the solemn feel of the story with the opening words With despair- cold, sharp despair- which terminate a sombre tone to the piece. Mansfields use of parenthesis beginning and ending with the repetition of despair s uccessfully captures a readers attending by isolating the explanation, highlighting its significance.The tether adjectives despair, cold and sharp are all harsh sounding and evoke emotions of pain and suffering, telling us that the story is about something bad. The use of the verb buried is poignant because of its connotations of death, reiterated by the simile deep in her heart like a wicked knife. The vision of the knife, cold and sharp suggests death or immense pain. We are first introduced to the main character, Miss Meadows in cap and gown and carrying a little baton as a strong stern woman, most likely a teacher because of the formality of the Miss.The image of her carrying a baton is police like and emits a strong female presence. She is described as walking with a trod which is animalistic and contrasts how the school girls are bubbling over with gleeful excitement and the means in which they move like autumn leaves. The huge contrast between the cold harsh language us ed to describe Mrs Meadows and the light-hearted past participles like bubbling, to describe the pupils highlights the different characters personalities and shows two extremes.Mansfield has used long judgment of convictions which suggest ongoing thoughts and emotions of the character Miss Meadows surrounded by a interest hectic environment. The subordinate clauses inject lots of extra information for the reader, and the power of three hurried, skipped, fluttered effectively portray imagery of an autumn morning. However, the past tense of the three verbs breaks the previous present tense imagery, suggesting that the narrator is clasping onto something from her past. Hollow and drumming imply drums and have connotations of emptiness, an element of Miss Meadows personality which has possibly been affected by her past.The description of the bird links back to the imagery of the autumnal morning, and are an example of the modernistic movement about the thoughts in our subconscious. An other example of this is the last sentence Someone had dropped her dumbbells which is totally unrelated to anything in the first passage, but shows another thought forming in the characters mind. It reminds us as the reader that it is a modernist piece of writing, with an abstract writing style which is more like real life.