At the Bay


"At the Bay" is a 1922 short story by Katherine Mansfield. It was first published in the London Mercury in January 1922 in twelve sections, and later reprinted in The Garden Party and Other Stories with a short descriptive coda which is now the thirteenth section. While writing it at the Chalet des Sapins in Montana, Switzerland, she was coming to terms with her relationship with her husband John Middleton Murry and with her own origins and identity.
Along with Prelude, The Doll's House and The Garden Party she uses her childhood in what are her most famous New Zealand stories, stories which display her talent at its most commanding and indescribable. She saw them as part of a “novel” to be called Karori and having two story cycles about the Burnell family and the Sheridan family.

Plot summary

; I
; II
; III
; IV
; V
; VI
; VII
; VIII
; IX
; X
; XI
; XII
; XIII

Characters

  • The Shepherd
  • Stanley Burnell
  • Linda Burnell
  • Jonathan Trout, likes music and books; he is the leader of the church choir.
  • Aunt Beryl
  • Mrs Fairfield
  • Kezia
  • Isabel
  • Lottie
  • The Samuel Josephs children
  • Pip, a cousin of the Burnells
  • Rags, a cousin of the Burnells. Pip and Rags are the Trout boys.
  • Mrs Harry Kember; an eccentric who smokes heavily and likes to play bridge
  • Gladys, Mrs Kember's servant, whom she calls Glad-eyes
  • Mrs Stubbs, who runs a shop near the beach; a friend of Alice.
  • Mr Harry Kember
  • Alice, the housekeeper