“The Fly.” “A Cup of Tea.” “Bliss.” These are all works by Katherine Mansfield that English teacher Anna Caponetti teaches to her English 10 Honors, English 12 Honors and in the past, her AP Literature students. In August, Caponetti had a paper published in the Katherine Mansfield Society’s scholarly journal.
The paper was about Mansfield, a modernist writer who writes in an accessible, succinct way through deep short stories and poems. Mansfield wrote primarily during the suffragette movement, early first wave feminism and pre-World War I, speaking about the competition for patriarchal attention as everything was passed from father to firstborn son. Caponetti centered her writing on two short stories in particular, “A Cup of Tea”, and “Bliss.”
“It was focused on femininity or divisive femininity in those stories,” Caponetti said. “She’s very cynical because she sees that women are complicit or even just active in oppressing other women.”
A lot of Mansfield’s stories focus on trophy wives who lack real world skills and inherit no property from their fathers or husbands, who are poised to make a choice to leave their husbands who are wealthy and privileged. A lot of the time they are treated harshly, but have so much to lose with very little possibility of gain. She also often writes about working class women who feel the lack of a husband and are suffering.
“Even if women chose to defy or chose to divorce or chose to stand on their own two feet, they wouldn’t be able to because they fear how difficult that would be,” Caponetti said. “[My paper] is looking at how women are portrayed as rival parasites in those two stories and how even though these women see themselves reflected in each other and could be allies, they don’t act on it.”
The piece was originally a graduate school paper that Caponetti had worked on at Oxford University in a modernist fiction class. She then expanded on it and submitted to the Katherine Mansfield Society, an international organization of scholars and various universities around the world who publish an annual book on a particular topic within the works of Katherine Mansfield.
“Since last year it was on Katherine Mansfield’s women and the depiction of femininity and issues raised from that, so mine applied,” Caponetti said. “I had to do a fair amount of revision, but I’d say about 75% of it is the same as the paper I had formerly used in grad school.”
The society sent out a call for papers on the subject, and gave specifications that they wanted before submitting. It then goes to a blind panel of scholars who decide which they want to publish. Caponetti submitted her paper and received a response with feedback from the anonymous panel, asking her to make edits in line with their constructive comments. From there, it was resubmitted and went through a publication process.
“I had a fair bit of imposter syndrome when writing my scholar bio,” Caponetti said. “I do dual enrollment through Fairfax County, so I am technically a professor through NOVA, and I mentioned that because it seemed more in line with what I thought would be the qualifications of others who are published. I don’t have a doctoral degree and I’m not a professor at a university, so that was anomalous for being published in a scholarly journal.”
Because the paper was published by the University of Edinburgh, the style of the paper had to be changed from MLA format, which Caponetti had used initially, to MHRA, a British style guide which is entirely different from MLA. She also had to change all her spellings to British spellings.
“[I felt] a sense of surrealism being asked to sign contracts through the University of Edinburgh press and send those back,” Caponetti said. “It did feel like I was moonlighting as a British professor.”
English teacher Amber Smith let former principal Ellen Reilly and the administration know last year about Caponetti’s publication. Lawrence Letkiewicz, the English department chair, bought a copy of the book and organized for everyone in the department to sign it for Caponetti’s birthday.
Although Caponetti didn’t aim her paper at fellow faculty members or at her students, the English department made sure they were able to read it, and referenced it in their birthday messages for Caponetti.
“I am happy that my colleagues read it,” Caponetti said. “I feel like they’re the ideal audience for reading something like that, and maybe there will be more of a push to teach her works in other classes that aren’t specifically mine.”
While Caponetti teaches Mansfield’s work to her English 10 Honors students, as a part of the modernism unit and final exam preparation, she primarily focuses on her stories with her senior students. At the end of the year, she teaches a modernism and existentialism unit, and hopes that time will permit her to increase the number of Mansfield’s stories she teaches.
“I think it resonates better [with] seniors,” Caponetti said. “Given that [they] are poised to make a decision to leave home, to go off on their own, to learn who they are, which may or may not be who they thought they were.”
Caponetti also notes that Mansfield is a queer writer, and many of her works subtly highlight inclusion within them.
“Particularly queer students really appreciated having the representation and the discussion of this perspective and knowing what it means,” Caponetti said. “Now knowing it doesn’t have to be cloaked or hidden today for fear of discrimination, hopefully the average reader can pick up on that better than perhaps those of the early 20th century.”
