Sun and Moon (Mansfield)

"Sun and Moon" is a 1920 short story by Katherine Mansfield. It was first published in the Athenaeum on 1 October 1920, and later reprinted in Bliss and Other Stories.[1]

Plot summary

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The children, Sun and Moon, are hanging around the house while a party is being prepared. They play games, then are sent off to bed. The party wakes them up; their parents find them out of their beds and instead of scolding them, they let them go downstairs for a bite - but Sun starts sobbing because Moon has eaten the nut from the centerpiece (the moment of ruined perfection, a recurring theme in Mansfield's work), and they are sent off to bed again.

Characters

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  • Sun (a boy)
  • Moon (a girl)
  • Nurse
  • Annie
  • Mother
  • Father
  • the pianist
  • Minnie, the new cook.
  • Nellie, the housemaid.

Major themes

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  • The gap between children and adults

Literary significance

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The text is written in the modernist mode, without a set structure, and with many shifts in the narrative.

Footnotes

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  1. ^ Katherine Mansfield, Selected Stories, Oxford World's Classics, explanatory notes
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