'The Name Day Party' and Intertextual Abortion

• In Event: Chekhov's "The Name Day Party"

Abstract

Despite the death of Olga's child at the end "The Name Day Party," Chekhov's story itself has long been considered extraordinarily fertile for the English modernist tradition. This paper reconsiders Chekhov's influence on Katherine Mansfield in particular, arguing that in the case of her short story "Prelude," Chekhov's model was inhibitory rather than productive. Mansfield's tale invokes "The Name Day Party" as a potential means of terminating the central character's unwanted pregnancy. Appealing to Chekhov intertextually, Mansfield's character asks for an abortion even as Mansfield herself chronicles her own aborted attempt to re-write Chekhov. In doing so, she casts a light back on "The Name Day Party," reading it as a meta-fiction about the ambivalence of literary (pro)creation.

Author

• Elizabeth Frances Geballe, Indiana U Bloomington