Analysis of an extract from ‘The Singing Lesson’

With despair unwarmed, sharp despair buried wakeless in her heart like a wicked knife, young woman Meadows, in crownwork and gown and carrying a little baton, trod the icy corridors that led to the unison hall. Girls of all ages, rosy from the air, and fulgid over with that gleeful excitement that comes from cartroad to educate on a fine autumn morning, hurried, skipped, fluttered by from the bellow class-rooms came a quick drumming of divisions a bell rang a voice like a bird cried, Muriel. And then there came from the staircase a tremendous knock-knock-knocking.Someone had dropped her dumbbells. The Singing Lesson by Katherine Mansfield is a short story create verbally with elements hinting at the modernist movement of the late 19th century. We are instantly inform of the solemn feel of the story with the opening words With despair- cold, sharp despair- which banish a sombre tone to the piece. Mansfields use of parenthesis jump and ending with the repetition of despair successfully captures a readers attention by isolating the description, highlighting its significance.The three adjectives despair, cold and sharp are all harsh sounding and evoke emotions of throe and suffering, telling us that the story is about something bad. The use of the verb buried is poignant because of its connotations of death, reiterated by the simile deep in her heart like a wicked knife. The imagery of the knife, cold and sharp suggests death or immense pain. We are first introduced to the main sheath, Miss Meadows in cap and gown and carrying a little baton as a rigid stern woman, most likely a teacher because of the formality of the Miss.The image of her carrying a baton is police like and emits a fast female presence. She is described as walking with a trod which is animalistic and contrasts how the school girls are bubbling over with gleeful excitement and the way in which they move like autumn leaves. The huge contrast between the cold harsh language used to describe Mrs Meadows and the light-hearted erstwhile(prenominal) participles like bubbling, to describe the pupils highlights the different characters personalities and shows two extremes.Mansfield has used hanker sentences which suggest ongoing thoughts and emotions of the character Miss Meadows surrounded by a busy hectic environment. The subordinate clauses inject lots of extra schooling for the reader, and the power of three hurried, skipped, fluttered effectively portray imagery of an autumn morning. However, the past tense of the three verbs breaks the previous present tense imagery, suggesting that the narrator is clasping onto something from her past. core out and drumming imply drums and have connotations of emptiness, an element of Miss Meadows personality which has maybe been affected by her past.The description of the bird links back to the imagery of the autumnal morning, and are an example of the modernistic movement about the thoughts in our subconscious . Another example of this is the last sentence Someone had dropped her dumbbells which is totally misrelated to anything in the first passage, but shows another thought forming in the characters mind. It reminds us as the reader that it is a modernist piece of writing, with an plagiarize writing style which is more like real life.