What Is The Symbolism In The Daughters Of The Late Colonel

In this extract of Daughters of the Late Colonel, Katherine Mansfield portrays to the reader her personal insights and intolerance of the patriarchy that dominated the Late-Victorian period. She particularly focuses on the entrapment and isolation women faced living in this social hierarchy, and expresses this through subtle manipulation of literary devices such as character, motif, imagery and symbolism, cast in almost satirical light that resonates throughout the entire story.

Mansfield explores thoroughly the relationship between the two sisters, Josephine and Constantia, and the father they have recently lost. The title of the story immediately suggests to the reader the nature of this relationship; implying the ownership and authority …show more content…
The fact that Josephine “heard his stick thumping” suggests the immense weight of the oppression he imposed on the two sisters in life, and how it affects their own lives even after he’s gone, feeling his ever-watchful spirit inhabiting objects they associate with him. This motif is echoed later in the story in the father’s study, as Josephine reflects “But how could she explain to Constantia that father was in the chest of drawers? He was in the top drawer with his handkerchiefs and neckties, or in the next with his shirts…” Emphasising that Josephine especially feels his spirit is trapped in his possessions, as if they’re tainted or cursed, embodying the tyranny they’ve been victims of their entire lives. Simultaneously Mansfield employs satire here: the almost laughable idea that these middle-aged women could be frightened of “handkerchiefs and …show more content…
This also suggests how sheltered they have been from the harsh realities of life, which is echoed again in Mansfield’s use of setting; the story of the two sisters predominantly takes place inside their father’s house, even this passage is narrated as a flashback (evident in the use of past tense at the beginning of the passage: “Josephine had had a moment of absolute terror at the cemetery”), which further symbolises how physically imprisoned by the house they feel as well as mentally by their father’s authority. This isolation is reinforced in how Josephine, through free-indirect discourse, refers to “The other people” at her father’s funeral; she perceives these people, who according to tradition should be those closest to the family, as “strangers”, implying that the two sisters have been kept from making intimate connections with anyone outside the walls of their own home and those deemed closest to the family are virtually exclusively vague acquaintances of her father, representing also the social dominance men held over family life at the time in which the story is