The most difficult thing in life is finding out who you are and where you fit in.

Jane Campions An Angel at My Table and Katherine Mansfields short stories The Garden
Party and Bliss are two texts which provide a sound basis for studying stigmas placed on
women in the modernist period. Campion and Mansfield both critique societys beliefs and
values post WW2. These texts explore the idea of women having limited options due to
conservative 1950s patriarchal society and alienation of women as a result of an inability to
fill the roles set by society

Mansfield was a modernist writer and her stories were written in a time where there was a
lot of pressure placed on women to conform to patriarchal stereotypes. Mansfields
characters reflect the limited options which their society allowed for women. An example of
this is shown in The Garden Party where Laura is a woman who is torn as she tries to break
down class barriers which are set by a society. She in part is trying to find her role she
supposed to challenge. Mansfield uses Bertha to critique the idea of womens inability to
conform to societys expectations.

In ATMT, Campion further explores women having limited options in a conformist society.
She presents a character whose ambition to become a writer is not tempered by her lack of
ability but rather frustratingly the expectation that these ambitions go beyond the roles that
society expects them to play. The responder sees Janet as a character with passion, talent
and a desire to achieve with is hampered by illness and a perception that she is
fundamentally incapable. When in high school and we see a close-up of Janet while her
teacher is reciting a poem, Janet feels that she's found a world she fits into. Societies
expectations are a person should be able to live an external life. Janet lives in a world inside
her own head. She struggles with whether she should fit in or be herself and live in her own
little world. She is living the scene as the teacher is reciting the poem.

Women in the 1950s conservative period show a hardship with identifying themselves
while also maintaining societys expectations. Mansfields stories are centred on characters
who very much reflect the stigma placed on women by society of the time. In particular this
relates to women who presented any difference to social expectation. In Katherine
Mansfields short story Bliss, the main character Bertha Young, experiences a struggle to
integrate her internal and external self within the structures of a male dominated society.
Katherine Mansfield particularly explores female identity and sexuality in this story. After
being rejected by her husband and her child, Bertha Young is pushed back into a corner,
where married woman have very little say in how they express their sexuality. This depiction
of Bertha presents both an expected view of women of the time.
Jane Campions ATMT also deals with Janet Frame who is presented as a very emotional
character who seems to be an outcast and separated from everybody else. In some ways
Janets view of herself run in parallel to the somewhat conservative roles of societal
expectations for women. The early part of the film it establishes Janet as someone who is
different. The first scene in the classroom tells us that she is already struggling with high
power authority. The teacher is seen from a low angle shot and Janet is seen from a high
angle shot. She is seen being labelled as ostracised, liar, thief.

Through their texts both Mansfield and Campien present distinctive characters with great
potential. In doing so, they seem to be challenging and in some ways subverting the idea
that women of this time were expected to work and achieve within limitations. It was a very
difficult time for women to go against the cultural stereotype. The characters that inhabit
these texts and the scenarios that they describe had already existed for some time.

It was hard for a woman to establish her own identity in a world which placed so many
demands on a person to conform to societies expectations. Both Mansfield and Campion
present texts that reflect a view of women which is constrained and confined by place, time
and social expectation. More than this, an atmosphere of limitation and in some regards
alienation and isolation forms an integral part of not only the substance of what the
composers present but also its value as a comment on women of their particular time.