How does Katherine Mansfield use literary features such as language, structure and imagery to generate effect and significance when talking about...

Stanley is an interesting character, painted by Mansfield as a sardonic, vaguely disgruntled figure—generally well-meaning but always a little out of luck. We can see this in the tone of the imagery used to describe his moods, as when he "gloomed as the chops began to fight the tea in his sensitive stomach." The imagery here personifies the chops and tea and leave Stanley their hapless inactive victim. When Stanley does his daily exercises, he...

Stanley is an interesting character, painted by Mansfield as a sardonic, vaguely disgruntled figure—generally well-meaning but always a little out of luck. We can see this in the tone of the imagery used to describe his moods, as when he "gloomed as the chops began to fight the tea in his sensitive stomach." The imagery here personifies the chops and tea and leave Stanley their hapless inactive victim. When Stanley does his daily exercises, he is "like a frog, shooting out his legs." While he does have "amazing vigour," the language and simile here make him appear slightly ridiculous and seem to "set him far away from Linda," his wife, who sees him as rather alien. Stanley's haplessness in the face of inanimate objects seemingly defeating him is a theme throughout Prelude, as when he had "butted into a white shirt only to find that some idiot had buttoned the neck band and he was caught." The irony here is that, of course, the "idiot" was evidently Stanley himself. The reader is invited to laugh at Stanley throughout the story. 

The aloe plant, like the inanimate objects that so perplex Stanley, is personified: it is depicted as something "fat" and "cruel" which keeps its bounty away from Linda. The aloe, she says, blooms "once in a hundred years." The effect here is to suggest that the plant could offer Linda more but it does not, something that mirrors her feelings about Stanley and his money. He is not a rich man, but she feels sometimes that he is "unreasonable" except when she remembers that she has no money of her own and therefore cannot complain. The aloe plant has "curving leaves that seem to be hiding something," and its "claws" instead of roots underline its sinister nature to Linda, yet she knows it conceals something beautiful it could offer if it would only do so. Here we see some insights into how Linda feels she is treated by the world. 

In both Prelude and At the Bay, we see several dogs but are told that "Aunt Linda hated decent dogs." Each dog has its own character, whether it be a mongrel or an old sheep dog which "cut an ancient caper or two and then pulled up sharp, ashamed of its levity." Again Linda seems to understand the dog better than she does her husband, and its motives are described more sympathetically. Linda ascribes a number of very human characteristics to the dog: she fears it is judging her, but also notes that it looks "proud" of the shepherd, its master. There is a vaguely forlorn sense that Linda wishes for a dog of her own that might be proud of her; she seems less detached from the dog--not her own--than from any of her own relatives.