SOURCE: “The Stories 1921-22: Sierre and Paris,” Katherine Mansfield, St. Martin's Press, 1981, pp. 95-135.

In the following excerpt from their full-length study of Katherine Mansfield, Hanson and Gurr suggest that the reason “The Fly” has elicited so much critical attention is that the symbolism of the story is flawed and invites conflicting interpretations.

“The Fly” was written in February 1922, while Katherine Mansfield was undergoing X-ray treatment in Paris. It was a story which she ‘hated writing’, though it is one which has produced a wealth of critical commentary, most notably in a series of articles in Essays in Criticism in 1962 and The Explicator rather earlier, in the 1940s. The Essays in Criticism series began with an article by F. W. Bateson and B. Shahevitch in which they argued that in “The Fly” Katherine Mansfield employed the techniques of narrative realism, using ‘irrelevant descriptive detail’ in order to make...