ABSTRACT
This chapter explores three aspects of Mansfield’s epiphanies: their structural value as focal points in the story, their psychological value as moments of empathy, and their spiritual value as moments of metaphysical insight. Structurally, her exceptional moments can provide the core event around which a slice-of-life story is organised. This presents emotional processes as turning points in a narrative of the self, and indeed, Mansfield’s aesthetic places empathy at the core of creative work, highlighting art as a bridge to make contact with others and to make sense of life as a harmonious whole. Mansfield’s perspective in stories like ‘Je ne parle pas français’ (1918), ‘Psychology’ (1919), ‘The Escape’ (1920), and ‘The Garden Party’ (1921) confirms epiphanies as moments of phenomenological suspension of habit, when the logic of emotions complements consciousness and grants a feeling of authentic contact with the self, the others, and the universal equilibrium of all beings.
