Analysis of the short story “A Cup of Tea” by Katherine Mansfield (ID:299067)

The text under discussion is a piece of belles-lettres writing, namely a short story under the title “A Cup of Tea” by the famous English modernist writer of the 20th century Katherine Mansfield. The events of the text are presented in the form of description intermingled with the elements of narration and characters’ dialogues. The narration is done in the 3rd person singular. The general emotional tone of this extract is not homogeneous: it is sentimental light at the beginning of the text but then it turns into tense and intriguing at the end. The events of the text are set in London, firstly in the shop, then outside, at the Curzon Street, and finally, at Rosemary’s house. The main characters are a rich woman Rosemary Fell, her husband Philip and a poor girl. II. Since we deal with a fictional writing, both types of information can be elicited from the text in terms of the category of informativity, namely, the factual and the conceptual ones. The main concern of the text is as follows: a rich woman meets a poor girl asking her for some money to buy a cup of tea. The woman regards this meeting as some adventure, but having understood that her husband is impressed by the girl’s beauty, she decides to part with her.