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Similes
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
The writing style in "Bliss" is notable for an abundance of strung-together clauses that form long, sweeping sentences, as well as interjections, parenthetical asides, and repeated words and phrases, all of which reflect Bertha's state of mind—frenetic, distracted, and effusive. The first two sentences of the story clearly demonstrate this style, with numerous clauses and interjecting phrases, like “absolute bliss!”:
Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at—nothing—at nothing, simply. What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly by a feeling of bliss—absolute bliss!—as though you'd suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe?
By mimicking Bertha’s mood and personality through style, Mansfield allows readers to access Bertha and feel close to her as a complex, richly drawn character: she thinks in a realistically disjointed way, as a real person would. This distinguishes Bertha from the flatter characters often found in 19th-century literature, who tend to symbolize virtues or vices, or offer coherent moral messages.
“Bliss” also includes naturalistic dialogue (similar to dialogue found in a play), with italics signifying the parts of sentences where speakers have placed emphasis, as in this quote from Eddie Warren: “I have had such a dreadful experience with a taxi-man; he was most sinister. The more I knocked and called the faster he went.” By proving faithful to real speech patterns, this dialogue allows readers to feel that they are eavesdropping on quotidian conversations among friends at a party—thus demonstrating that the substance of the everyday can be a fertile topic for literature (an idea that is, in itself, a key component of literary modernism).
