SOURCE: “Katherine Mansfield's ‘The Fly’: An Attempt to Capture the Boss,” in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 11, No. 1, Winter, 1974, pp. 85-92.

In the following essay, Michel-Michot declares that “The Fly” is a story about self-discovery and the resulting terror that forces a man to try to forget the awful truths he has learned about himself.

No other story of Katherine Mansfield has prompted such a critical controversy.¹ Many critics have proposed interesting interpretations; yet the more one reads of the criticism, the more one realises that the answer to the problem the story raises is not in fact found in just one or another sentence, symbol or parallel inside or outside the story. Critics seem to have been obsessed by the necessity to equate the fly with either the boss, Woodifield, the boss's son, or the boss's grief. Though the story is called “The Fly” it is not...