The London Mercury , vol. The London Mercury was a journal dedicated to literature and criticism and Mansfield piece fits in nicely with the other stories, although it does stand out as one of the more remarkable pieces in the April edition. There is unwillingness, on both sides, to change the situation; they would both prefer to continue living in bondage to one another. This story is significant because it highlights the many problems Mansfield associated with marriageβthere was no freedom in marriage, which is probably why Mansfield defiantly abandoned hers and only returned to her husband as an already established free woman.
This adds to the discussion about how Modernist writers were rebelling against the Victorian Era and why that was important to them. It is evening. Supper is over. All is as usual. I am sitting at my writing table which is placed across a corner so that I am behind it, as it were, and facing the room. The lamp with the green shade is alight; I have before me two large books of reference, both open, a pile of papers My wife, with her little boy on her lap, is in a low chair before the fire.
She is about to put him to bed before she clears away the dishes and piles them up in the kitchen for the servant girl to-morrow morning. But the warmth, the quiet, and the sleepy baby, have made her dreamy. One of his red woollen boots is off, one is on.
She sits, bent forward, clasping the little bare foot, staring into the glow, and as the fire quickens, falls, flares again, her shadowβan immense Mother and Child β is here and gone again upon the wall. Outside it is raining. I like to think of that cold drenched window behind the blind, and beyond, the dark bushes in the garden, their broad leaves bright with rain, and beyond the fence, the gleaming road with the two hoarse little gutters singing against each other, and the wavering reflections of the lamps, like fishes' tails.
While I am here, I am there, lifting my face to the dim sky, and it seems to me it must be raining all over the worldβthat the whole earth is drenched, is sounding with a soft quick patter or hard steady drumming, or gurgling and something that is like sobbing and laughing mingled together, and that light playful splashing that is of water falling into still lakes and flowing rivers. And all at one and the same moment I am arriving in a strange city, slipping under the hood of the cab while the driver whips the cover off the breathing horse, running from shelter to shelter, dodging someone, swerving by someone else.
