A PERFECT TRAP: The exotopic view in “Je ne parle pas français” by Katherine Mansfield

Abstract

Endowed with extreme lyricism and keen sensitivity, Katherine Mansfield's work marked a generation of writers of the early twentieth century and solidified her base among literary productions in English. In a time when private and intimate universe was reserved to women’s social relationships, the writing of Katherine Mansfield comes to reveal the hidden side of this public universe, so essential to the knowledge of ourselves. From this psychological clarification, ordinary facts of everyday life take on new perspectives in focus of a character in constant self-assertion. This is the case of the short story “Je ne parle pas Français”, whose character-narrator Raoul Duquette presents an ambiguous and seductive speech, therefore, fraught with subliminal traps able to attract fragile and innocent preys. Based on the discursive manipulation from one who tells his own story and on the distance in space / time between the experience and the reporting, this paper aims to analyze the short story with regard to the point of view and to the symbolism of the dog and the mouse to, finally illustrate the (de)construction of the notion of gender. For this purpose, we apply the concept of exotopia, by Mikhail Bakhtin, in order to check the exceeding view in the space / time of a first-person narrator.