Katherine Mansfield’s “Carnation” presents M. Hugo’s French class on a hot day. Like biblical Eve and her Eden, the girls are enclosed in the familiar, the routine, until curiosity leads one outside the walls. The collective body of the class shatters as sexual desire becomes the means of stabilizing identity and escaping M. Hugo’s garden.

     The girls sit in class listening to M. Hugo’s lesson. M. Hugo speaks French to them. Everything the girls may understand M. Hugo must first digest as he is the teacher and the only native speaker of French. He controls each girl’s proficiency in the language as his student’s can only master what he has chosen to include in the curriculum. Language is a system in which people choose to remain silent about certain things. The girls can only say what M. Hugo has taught them, nothing more, unless their personal curiosity carries them to study French beyond the walls of the classroom, which seems to be the case in Eve, as the narrator points out when comparing her understanding of French to Katie’s. Excluding Eve, French serves as an equalizer for the girls as they experience something foreign together. M. Hugo acts as their only guide, steering the girl’s grasp of the unfamiliar, the exotic like a sort of god, though the girls cannot recognize him as such because of the banality with which they associate his lesson. Although M. Hugo teaches a subject foreign to the girls, he has become part of their routine. The narrator does not individualize the experience of his class, but rather displays it as a collective monotony, such as when Francie Owen moans “‘Go—od God!’” (2) the moment M. Hugo gropes for the girls’ attention.  The narrator crams descriptions of the girls, save Eve and Katie, into one paragraph. The individual descriptions of the girls in class may be unique to each of them, but all represent boredom. The girls may be experiencing boredom in different ways, but they go through it together. Like the girls, Eden’s Eve carries a curiosity that flourishes in boredom. Eden to her could not have been paradise because she did not know of anything different. Like M. Hugo’s students’ attitude towards French class, biblical Eve’s perception of Eden transforms the exotic and ideal into the familiar and monotonous. The girls, excluding Mansfield’s Eve, represent a collective biblical Eve before original sin.

     Tedium alone does not bond the girls. The climate of the classroom also melts them together.  Heat stifles all individual sensation. It overwhelms to the point that all physical feelings become anonymous and communal, as when the narrator releases, “Oh, bother! It was too hot! Frightfully hot! Grilling simply!” (1). The heat eclipses M. Hugo’s lesson, and each girl can be found suffering through it. Each girl’s portrait portrays her fiddling with her body. Vera Holland pins back her hair, Francie Owen inks a vein, Sylvia Mann undresses. Jennie Edward’s action of writing a note features a joke of flirtation with M. Hugo, unbelievable enough to turn Connie Baker purple in the face. Each of the girls’ reactions to the heat holds a pinprick of sex. The heat foreshadows a sexual experience with its ability to engulf the body of each girl, and Mansfield’s inclusion of each girl in relation to the heat of the room presents the ability of sex to individualize. The girls cannot break from each other or M. Hugo’s classroom until a sexual experience is realized.

     Eve has already broken her ties to the other girls. She achieves this with the carnation in her hand. As with the other girls, the narrator introduces Eve in terms of the heat. However, the narrator separates Eve, saying  “On those hot day Eve-- curious Eve-- always carried a flower,” (1). Unlike the other girls, the narrator emphasizes the fact that Eve has experienced heat like this before, and this sensation is not all that uncommon to her since she has built a routine out of it, the flower. The narrator’s sentence structure isolates Eve as they dash off the phrase “curious Eve”. Eve’s curiosity rifts the classroom. In her hand, Eve holds a carnation. The word “carnation” originates from the Latin root “carnis”, meaning flesh. Pink-hued carnations developed their name after “incarnation”, referring to God-made flesh. But the narrator points out that Eve’s carnation is red and not pink, noting the unnaturalness of it when they say that the flower looks “ as though it had been dipped in wine and left in the dark to dry” (1).  Though Eve’s carnation arises from nature, the red color inspires doubt, resulting in questions of whether or not the carnation is, indeed, “god-made flesh”. Similarly, the narrator calls attention to the abnormal nature of Eve as they compare her laugh to a cruel bird. Though Eve and her flower may be dubious, the trinket is undoubtedly a carnation, the symbol of love and fascination. The narrator does not clarify if someone gave Eve the carnation or if she acquired the flower herself. Despite the ambiguity, Eve’s possession of the carnation suggest that she could be the object of love or fascination as she alone carries the flower, unlike any of  the other girls. And Eve’s proclivity to tote a flower in the heat may mean she often finds herself in this position. The fame of the bibilical Eve stands in her being the first woman and the first sinner. Though M. Hugo’s class brims with Eve-figures, Mansfield’s designating the true name to the girl twirling the carnation says that this designated Eve embodies both facets: the first woman and the first sinner. Compared to the other girls, Mansfield’s Eve could be the first woman in M. Hugo’s class if  a love interest gifted her the carnation. Even if this is not the case, by carrying the carnation, Eve designates herself as the object of love and fascination, two ideas that depend on the ability to conjure desire and temptation. Along with this, Eve’s proficiency in French stands out, and she and Katie sit-up alone in listening to M. Hugo’s reading. Mansfield’s Eve, therefore, represents the biblical Eve after she transcends paradise.

     Katie stands in the middle. While the narrator does not mash her into the collective description of M. Hugo’s students, Katie carries no flower. She is neither an Eve before temptation nor an Eve after temptation. Rather, Katie presents an Eve at the moment of temptation. All women have inherited biblical Eve’s punishment,stemming from the belief Eve’s temptation could be passed on like a gene. As the sinner Eve, Mansfield’s Eve is responsible for guiding her fellow Eves into womanhood, and Katie becomes the first. During M. Hugo’s lesson, Eve advises Katie, ““‘Roses are delicious, my dear Katie...but carnations are simple divine’” (1).Eve’s remark reveals her experience in consuming flowers, which creates the possibility of consuming flesh. In addition, Eve cannot describe the sensation of eating carnations to Katie as she exclaims, “‘They taste like-- like-- ah well!’” (1). Eve gives up trying to explain the feeling to Katie, realizing Katie must experience it for herself. In a French class, Eve realizes language cannot be enough to pin-down all sensations. Katie, therefore, must experience what Eve has felt for herself before she can understand the pleasure of carnations.

     Like the rest of the class, heat devours Katie. However, Katie looks beyond the discomfort and out the window onto the stables. She still sits in the Eden of M. Hugo’s class, but through fantasy, she moves over the walls and into the truly foreign, an image her mind must summon as her body remains enclosed in the room. She aligns herself with Eve. As M. Hugo begins his reading, the narrator describes the girls, save Eve and Katie, saying , “most of the girls fell forward, over the desks, their heads on their arms, dead at the first shot,” (2). Unlike the other girls, Katie has entered a point in which she can withstand the tedium of M. Hugo. However, her inability to understand M.Hugo’s French recitation means she has not yet reached the level of Mansfield’s Eve. Rather than trying the understand the poetry, Katie pictures the man working in the stables as he flings water over the wheels of a carriage. This image aligns with the voice of M. Hugo as it mounts and falls, dramatizing the poetry. As Katie’s fantasy builds, Eve encourages her whispering “‘Courage, my pet,’” (2) as she kisses the red carnation. Eve guides Katie out of paradise, and when the rushing of Katie’s fantasy and M. Hugo’s voice harmonize, “The whole room broke into pieces” (3). Katie shatters her Eden.

     And once the transformation metabolizes, Eve recognizes the changed Katie. She leaves the half-eaten carnation in Katie’s blouse, a “‘Souvenir tendre,’” (3), the first bit of French that does not come from the lips of M. Hugo.

 

 

 

Works Cited

 

Mansfield, Katherine. "Carnation" Katherine Mansfield Society. Katherine Mansfield Society, n.d.