English: How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped

https://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/assets/KM-Stories/HOW-PEARL-BUTTON-WAS-KIDNAPPED-1912.pdf 

Post Reading Questions

Who were the main characters of the story? 

• Pearl Button - a little girl with curly blonde hair, and white teeth, had lots of layers of clothes, pinafore, petticoat, stockings, and shoes.
• Two dark-skinned fat women (Maori women), one was wearing a red dress, and the other wearing a yellow and green dress, bare-foot, and no stockings.
• Two small men wearing blue (Police)

What happened to Pearl Button in the story? 

Pearl was kidnapped by the two big Maori women, they took her to a log room full of other people who were the same skin as them. They gave Pearl Button a peach and she ate it, the juice running down her front, people laughing at her, they were amused at the little girl. After the funny event, Pearl was carried again but in a green cart with two ponies, red and black. They arrived quickly at their location which was the beach, warm sand, singing birds, and grass pushing against Pearl's pale feet. Suddenly, two little blue men came running towards, carried her back to the House of Boxes.

Pakeha vs Maori Living

The Māori of New Zealand lived in a more communal way than New Zealand’s Pākehā immigrants. Pākehā arrived in Aotearoa and immediately started sectioning up the space — from land down to living quarters. 

While European settlers lived in little houses, Māori people did not live like this. The pā can refer to any Māori village or defensive settlement, and is the centre of a Māori community, extending the concept of family out beyond the traditional nuclear family by European concept. Mansfield grew up alongside Māori pā culture and would have noted the differences.

Katherine Mansfield’s story ‘How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped’ (1910) can be considered as a paradigmatic example of the author’s use of family relations as a prism for examining a number of issues.

Pākehā vs. Māori, community, urban vs. rural, man vs. nature, conformity vs. freedom, order vs. chaos etc…

To convey these issues without being so literal, Mansfield uses allegory to hide these issues within her text.

Allegory: a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.

Symbolism

• Allegory can be hard to discern. 
• A great way to uncover it is to look for the symbolism hidden in the text.
• Symbolism is a literary device that uses symbols, be they words, people, marks, locations, or abstract ideas to represent something beyond the literal meaning.

What are some symbolism in the story?

Little men in blue coats - This means that they are polices 

Pearl Button swung on the little gate in front of the House of Boxes - Symbolism of the difference of living conditions between Pakeha's and Maori's.