"Something Childish But Very Natural" is a short story written by

Katherine Mansfield Kathleen Mansfield Murry (née Beauchamp; 14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a New Zealand writer and critic who was an important figure in the Literary modernism, modernist movement. Her works are celebrated across the world and have been ...

in 1914. It was first published posthumously in the '' Adelphi''.Katherine Mansfield, ''Selected Stories'', Oxford World's Classics, explanatory notes It was republished in '' Something Childish and Other Stories'' (1924).

Plot summary

At a train station, Henry looks at books and comes upon Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem. Then he jumps onto the train as he is late, and has left his portfolio behind. On the train, he starts talking to a girl, until she tells him she will be there again every evening. On the following Saturday, he goes to the station and sees her; they get on the train and start talking like old friends. Later, they go to a concert, and she appears somewhat distant. They walk down the streets of

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

and come upon a pretty village nearby. There, they visit a house and decide to rent it. Then Henry receives a telegram, and things fall apart.

Characters

*Henry. He is almost 18 years old and works in an architect's office. *Edna. She is 16 years old and goes to a training college to be a secretary. Her mother is Hungarian.

Major themes

*Love *Family *The transitional period between childhood and adolescence *The tension between fantasy and reality

Literary significance

The text is written in the

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

mode, without a set structure, and with many shifts in the narrative.

Footnotes

External links

''Something Childish But Very Natural'' at the New Zealand Text Centre
Modernist short stories 1914 short stories Short stories by Katherine Mansfield Works originally published in The Adelphi Short stories published posthumously {{1910s-story-stub