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I want to be REAL

© Philippa Jane Ballantine

New Zealand's most famous writer, a master of the short story, and well known for her technique of montage writing. Her name was Katherine Mansfield, another unique New Zealand woman, haunted by her own contradictions and destined for tragedy. She was a bohemian, a rebel in a time that wasn’t kind to those who didn’t conform, and she stalked the fringes of London’s Bloomsbury group while pining a little for the green shores of New Zealand. She was described by her friend and rival Virginia Woolf as "of the cat kind, alien, composed, always solitary & observant."

Even after over a hundred years since her birth, Mansfield is still the pinnacle of New Zealand literary achievement. She was born in the capital Wellington in 1888, Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp, the daughter of socially ambitious parents. Her father was a successful local businessman, and their house in Thorndon showed their affluence. When she was about five they moved to the suburb of Karori nestled in green hills, but later when Katherine was eleven they returned to Thorndon, where she went to attend Miss Swainson’s private school.

But when Katherine was a teenager she went as many young wealthy New Zealander’s did to a finishing school in Europe. Her father, now a director of the Bank of New Zealand, sent her to Queen’s College in London, which had a good reputation for the liberal education of women.. Katherine showed considerable talent at languages, music and writing, and had her first story published in the college magazine.

In 1906 she returned to Wellington, but the town has become too small. She railed against all the social conventions, having romantic infatuations with both men and women. It was during this time that Katherine went on a journey into the Urewera country in the north of New Zealand, a area of thick bush and legend. What she saw there she liked, but it was not enough to make her stay.

After nearly two years of struggle with her parents, Katherine was allowed to return to London to study music, but life was not ever going to be simple. She had an affair with the son of her cello teacher in Wellington, Garnet Trowell, but when that broke up, she impulsively married GC Bowden a singing teacher. The day after the marriage realizing her mistake, she left him. Reuniting with Trowell, she worked in his opera company for a while, became pregnant, and abandoned him again.

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