Open AccessAppraising Katherine Mansfield’s Father Figures in “The Little Girl”: A Transitivity Analysis
Author(s) -
Md. Saiful Alam,
Adelina Asmawi,
Md. Mohib Ullah,
Shafinur Nahar,
Sayeda Fatema
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
bulletin of advanced english studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2617-6459
pISSN - 2617-6440
DOI - 10.31559/baes2020.5.2.2
Subject(s) - girl , transitive relation , impossibility , theme (computing) , power (physics) , style (visual arts) , psychology , gender studies , developmental psychology , sociology , literature , art , law , physics , mathematics , combinatorics , quantum mechanics , political science , computer science , operating system
This article explores the patterns of father figures, the father -child relationships and power imbalance depicted in Katherine Mansfield's “The Little Girl”, using one tool of analysis from Systemic Functional Grammar, which is Transitivity. Examined are the ways Mansfield, as a Modernist and feminist writer, thematizes and engages herself to the theme of the fathering model and the father - child relationships typical of her time in her story. The study concentrates on The Little Girl, by Mansfield, which contains father figures and children as one of the central issues. The study concludes that there is a remote father syndrome in Mansfield's “The Little Girl”, and that the fathering style and practice of the Old Father type makes the impossibility of healthy father-child relationships, and that the Old Father's conventional fatherhood creates a power imbalance between males and females, and finally there is an aspiration for the New type of father in the child’s life.