Apperance Vs Reality

In “ A married man’s story” and “ Bliss” Katherine Mansfield is able to portray how appearance might be totally different from reality. “ A married man’s story” shows us inside the husbands thoughts and memories and how in reality he is dispassionate about everything around him . While , in “Bliss” we get a glimpse of how Bertha believes her life is “Bliss” instead of facing reality.

We enter the mind of the husband in “ a married man’s story” and we reveal that even though from the outside his family seems happy and well suited . In reality however,he is detached from his wife and child and how he “never accepted “ his child as his own. He does not love his wife and feels that she has no “strong maternal feelings” . He has no reason of being with her yet he can not leave her out of fear of change . One might explain his detachment from his family due to his past and how his father was also detached and might have been having an affair . Another memory that might have influenced his character was that he suspects that one night his mother came to him before she died and told him that his father had poisoned her. These childhood incidents might be the reason why he can not be passionate about his family and why he always feels