Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield was a modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in New Zealand

A. Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was born in 1888, into a prominent family in Wellington, New Zealand. She became one of New Zealand's best-known writers, using the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. The daughter of a banker, and born into a middle-class family, she was also a first cousin of Countess Elizabeth von Arnim, a distinguished novelist in her time. Mansfield had two older sisters and a younger brother. Her father, Harold Beauchamp, went on to become the chairman of the Bank of New Zealand. In 1893, the Mansfield family moved to Karori, a suburb of Wellington, where Mansfield would spend the happiest years of her childhood; she later used her memories of this time as an inspiration for her Prelude story.

B. Her first published stories appeared in the High School Reporter and the Wellington Girls7 High School magazine in 1898 and 1899. In 1902, she developed strong feelings for a musician who played the cello, Arnold Trowell, although her feelings were not, for the most part, returned. Mansfield herself was an accomplished cellist, having received lesion from Trowell's father. Mansfield wrote in her journals of feeling isolated to some extent in New Zealand, and, in general terms of her interest in the Maori people ( New Zealand's native people), who were often portrayed in a sympathetic light in her later stories, such as How Pearl Button was Kidnapped.

C. She moved to London in 1903, where she attended Queen's college, along with her two sisters. Manfield recommenced playing the cello, an occupation that she believed, during her time at Queen's, she would take up professionally. She also began contributing to the college newspaper, with such a dedication to it that she eventually became its editor. She was particularly interested in the works of the French writers of this period and of the 19th-century British writer, Oscar Wilde, and she was appreciated amongst fellow students at Queen's for her lively and charismatic approach to life and work. She met fellow writer Ida Baker, a South African, at the college, and the pair became lifelong friends. Mansfield did not actively support the suffragette movement in the UK. Women in New Zealand had gained the right to vote in 1893.

D. Mansfield first began journeying into the other parts of Europe in the period 1903-1906, mainly to Belgium and Germany. After finishing her schooling in England, she returned to her New Zealand home in 1906, only then beginning to write short stories in a serious way. She had several works published in Australia in a magazine called Native Comparison, which was her first paid writing work, and by this time she had her mind set on becoming a professional writer. It was also the first occasion on which she used the pseudonym "K.Mansfield".

E. Mansfield rapidly grew discontented with the provincial New Zealand lifestyle, and with her family. Two years later she headed again in London. Her father sent her an annual subsidy of €100 for the rest of her life. In later years, she would express both admiration and disdain for New Zealand in her journals.

F. In 1911, Mansfield met John Middleton Murry, the Oxford scholar and editor of the literary magazine Rhythm. They were later to marry in 1918. Mansfield became a co-editor of Rhythm, which was subsequently called The Blue Review, in which more of her works were published. She and Murry lived in various houses in England and briefly in Paris. The Blue Review failed to gain enough readers and was no longer published. Their attempt to set up as writers in Paris was cut short by Murry's bankruptcy, which resulted from the failure of this and other journals. Life back in England meant frequently changed addresses and very limited funds.

G. Between 1915 and 1918, Mansfield moved between England and Bandoi, France. She and Murry developed close contact with other well-known writers of the time such as DH Lawrence, Bertrand Russell and Aldous Huxley. By October 1918 Mansfield had become seriously ill; she had been diagnosed with tuberculosis and was advised to enter a sanatorium. She could no longer spend time with writers in London. In the autumn of 1918 she was so ill that she decided to go to Ospedale in Italy. It was the publication of Bliss and Other Stories in 1920 that was to solidify Mansfield's reputation as a writer.

H. Mansfield also spent time in Menton, France, as the tenant of her father's cousin at " The Villa Isola Bella". There she wrote she pronounced it to be "...the only story that satisfies me to any extent".

Mansfield produced a great deal of work in the final years of her life, and much of her prose and poetry remained unpublished at her death in 1923. After her death, her husband, Murry, took on the task of editing and publishing her works. His efforts resulted in two additional volumes of short stories. The Doves' Nest and Something Childish, published in 1923 and 1924 respectively, the publication of her Poems as well as a collection of critical writings (Novels and Novelist) and a number of editions of Mansfield's previously unpublished letters and journals.

Yawning

How and why we yawn still presents problems for researchers in an area which has only recently been opened up to study

A. When Robert R Provine began studying yawning in the 1960s, it was difficult for him to convince research students of the merits of 'yawning science. Although it may appear quirky to some, Provine's decision to study yawning was a logical extension of his research in developmental neuroscience.

B. The verb 'to yawn' is derived from the Old English ganien or ginian, meaning to gape or open wide. But in addition to gaping jaws, yawning has significant features that are easy to observe and analyse. Provine 'collected' yawns to study by using a variation of the contagion response*. He asked people to 'think about yawning' and, once they began to yawn, to depress a button that would record from the start of the yawn to the exhalation at its end.

C. Provine's early discoveries can be summarized as follows: the yawn is highly stereotyped but not invariant in its duration and form. It is an excellent example of the instinctive 'fixed action pattern' of classical animal-behavior study, or ethology. It is not a reflex (short-duration, rapid, proportional response to a simple stimulus), but, once started, a yawn progresses with the inevitability of a sneeze. The standard yawn runs its course over about six seconds on average, but its duration can range from about three seconds to much longer than the average. There are no half-yawns: this is an example of the typical intensity of fixed action patterns and a reason why you cannot stifle yawns. Just like a cough, yawns can come in bouts with a highly variable inter-yawn interval, which is generally about 68 seconds but rarely more than 70. There is no relation between yawn frequency and duration: producers of short or long yawns do not compensate by yawning more or less often. Furthermore, Provine's hypotheses about the form and function of yawning can be tested by three informative yawn variants which can be used to look at the roles of the nose, the mouth and the jaws.

i) The closed nose yawn

Subjects are asked to pinch their nose closed when they feel themselves start to yawn. Most subjects report being able to perform perfectly normal closed nose yawns. This indicates that the inhalation at the onset of a yawn, and the exhalation at its end, need not involve the nostrils - the mouth provides a sufficient airway.

ii) The clenched teeth yawn

Subjects are asked to clench their teeth when they feel themselves start to yawn but allow themselves to inhale normally through their open lips and clenched teeth. This variant gives one the sensation of being stuck mid­yawn. This shows that gaping of the jaws is an essential component of the fixed action pattern of the yawn, and unless it is accomplished, the program (or pattern) will not run to completion. The yawn is also shown to be more than a deep breath, because, unlike normal breathing, inhalation and exhalation cannot be performed so well through the clenched teeth as through the nose.

iii) The nose yawn 

This variant tests the adequacy of the nasal airway to sustain a yawn. Unlike normal breathing, which can be performed equally well through the mouth or nose, yawning is impossible via nasal inhalation alone. As with the clenched teeth yawn, the nose yawn provides the unfulfilling sensation of being stuck in mid-yawn. Exhalation, on the other hand, can be accomplished equally well through nose or mouth. Through this methodology Provine demonstrated that inhalation through the oral airway and the gaping of jaws are necessary for normal yawns. The motor program for yawning will not run to completion without feedback that these parts of the program have been accomplished.

D. But yawning is a powerful, generalized movement that involves much more than airway maneuvers and jaw-gaping. When yawning you also stretch your facial muscles, tilt your head back, narrow or close your eyes, produce tears, salivate, open the Eustachian tubes of your middle ear and perform many other, yet unspecified, cardiovascular and respiratory acts. Perhaps the yawn shares components with other behaviour. For example, in the yawn a kind of 'slow sneeze' or is the sneeze a 'fast yawn'? Both share common respiratory and other features including jaw gaping, eye closing and head tilting.

E. Yawning and stretching share properties and may be performed together as parts of a global motor complex. Studies by J I p deVries et al. in the early 1980s, charting movement in the developing foetus using ultrasound, observed a link between yawning and stretching. The most extraordinary demonstration of the yawn-stretch linkage occurs in many people paralyzed on one side of their body because of brain damage caused by a stroke, the prominent British neurologist Sir Francis Walshe noted in 1923 that when these people yawn, they are startled and mystified to observe that their otherwise paralyzed arm rises and flexes automatically in what neurologists term an 'associated response'. Yawning apparently activates undamaged, unconsciously controlled connections between the brain and the motor system, causing the paralyzed limb to move. It is not known whether the associated response is a positive prognosis for recovery, nor whether yawning is therapeutic for prevention of muscular deterioration.

F. Provine speculated that, in general, yawning may have many functions, and selecting a single function from the available options may be an unrealistic goal. Yawning appears to be associated with a change of behavioral state, switching from one activity to another. Yawning is also a reminder that ancient and unconscious behavior linking us to the animal world lurks beneath the veneer of culture, rationality and language.