The Canary (short story)

"The Canary" is a short story by Katherine Mansfield. It was first published posthumously in The Nation and Atheneum on 21 April 1923, and later appeared in The Doves' Nest and Other Stories (1923).[1]

Mansfield began writing the story at the Victoria Palace Hotel in Paris in 1922, where a woman who lived opposite the hotel kept canaries in a cage. She finished the story on 7 July 1922, when she and her husband John Middleton Murry were living at a hotel in Randogne (now part of Crans-Montana), Switzerland, from 4 June to 16 August 1922. It was the last short story she ever completed.[2]


Plot summary

The story is told in the first person by a lonely woman. She discusses her pet canary who has died at an unspecified time in the past. She gives him some anthropomorphic characteristics, describing his personality and his habits, and the companionship he provided her with. She discusses her three lodgers, who she overhears mockingly calling her "the scarecrow".

Characters in "The Canary"
  • A lonely woman
  • A canary
  • A Chinaman who sold her the canary
  • Three young male lodgers.

Major themes
  • Loneliness
  • Companionship
  • Grief

Footnotes
  1. Mansfield, Katherine; Smith, Angela (ed.) (2002) Selected Stories, with an introduction and explanatory notes by Angela Smith, p. 396. Oxford: Oxford University Press
  2. Mansfield, Katherine (2001) The Montana Stories, p. 327. London: Persephone Books (A collection of all Mansfield's work written from June 1921 until her death, including unfinished work.)
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