On ?Her First Ball? By Katherine Mansfield
Writing From A Woman?s World
Everything is so magical, exactly the way it is in fairyland. Leila, Katherine Mansfield?s main character in the short story, ?Her First Ball?, is absolutely breath-taken at every sight and sound at the ball. Everything around her is so strikingly new and enthralling. It is Leila?s first ball, and her first exposition to society. Mansfield describes the young girl?s emotions and excitement in a way that incarcerates her readers in the quaint fantasy world of Leila, and within the damsel?s spinning cyclone of different feelings and emotions.
Mansfield illustrates a rich, colorful fairy-tale-like picture as the setting of Leila?s world. We can obviously sense how Leila?s perception of the ball is that of a dreamlike event. The author shows her readers at the beginning of the story how Leila felt more like Cinderella incarnated in her body; for, her thrill is felt when she is in the cab passing by ?waltzing? lampposts. Apparently, Leila?s heart is beating fast here, and we
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