SOURCE: Breuer, Horst. “K. Mansfield's ‘The Stranger’: Text, Subtext, Pretext.” English Studies 83, no. 5 (November 2002): 423-30.

In the following essay, Breuer offers a psychoanalytic interpretation of “The Stranger” and investigates the literary source of the story's title.

Katherine Mansfield's short story ‘The Stranger’ (written 1920, published 1921) is one of her finest narratives. It holds a delicate balance between psychological realism and social satire. It analyzes with consummate empathy and linguistic skill a significant marital configuration of early 20th century middle-class society. The protagonist and narrative focus is a husband of the possessive-and-demanding type who, at slight provocation, experiences an acute neurotic crisis and turns out to be precariously dependent on his wife's affection and care. The aim of the present paper is to attempt a multi-layered reading of the story, in terms of literary criticism as well as psychoanalytic interpretation, and to determine a probable literary source of its somewhat...