SOURCE: Stafford, Jane, and Mark Williams. “Fashioned Intimacies: Maoriland and Colonial Modernity.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 37, no. 1 (2002): 31-48.

In the following essay, Stafford and Williams elucidate Mansfield's attitude toward her homeland of New Zealand and consider her place in the movement of literary nationalism known as Maoriland.

In Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) Stephen Dedalus's friend, Davin, is tempted sexually by a peasant woman.¹ He declines her offer, but is attracted by the strangeness of the encounter and the frankness of the invitation. Although an ardent nationalist and affectionately described by Stephen as a peasant, Davin finds the seductions of traditional Ireland resistible. To Stephen, the life of the peasantry is inscrutable and more than faintly repugnant. He fears the “red-rimmed horny eyes” of an ancient Irish-speaking peasant and feels he must struggle with him “all through this night till day come”.² Yet pleasing...