Katherine Mansfield's "Bliss" is a very beautifully modulated short story that gives us an insight into the mind of a young woman Bertha. Bertha the innocently happy wife in a moment of horrified insight recognizes her successful rival. Bertha is suddenly aware that she had been living in a world of illusion and finds herself in the world of experience.
Bertha Young the main protagonist of the short story "Bliss" is a thirty-year-old beautiful upper middle class housewife. In the beginning of the story, we find Bertha in an ecstatic mood. She is very happy with her life. So happy that she cannot express her happiness in words. She feels there is no way of expressing this happiness without being drunk and disorderly. She thinks her life is perfect. She has a beautiful house, an adorable baby girl and sophisticated friends. She is very much in love with her husband and believes he also loves her dearly. However, her happy world is shattered when she finds about the infidelity of her husband, Harry.
Bertha lives in a world of illusion. She fails to feel how strictly her life is controlled and conditioned by others. Her relationship with the nurse and her baby reflects the unnatural symmetry of her life. She is imperfect in her marital life. She is physically cold towards her husband. Still she believes that her husband loves her very much, is happy in their conjugal life and is completely devoted to her. Bertha is a naive and immature woman. She fails to understand that her friend Miss Fulton was close to her because she wanted to get close to Harry. She fails to see the real face of her latest find until she sees Harry and Pearl kissing. With that, her apparently perfect life is ruined. She now seems to have emerged out of the world of illusion, which she herself has created. "What will happen next" refers to the forthcoming tribulation of Berthas psyche. It is also very tragic because this shockin
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