Frau Brechenmacher Attends a Wedding 

Katherine Mansfield is a modernist writer, and with her short story "Frau Brechenmacher Attends a Wedding," she uses interior monologues and satire. The main plot of the story consists of our main character, Frau, preparing her husband's clothes before attending a wedding, walking behind her husband on the way to the wedding, feeling shame because of her husband and the people who attended the wedding, and finally walking ahead of her husband on the way back home, as if in rebellion, but covering her face like a baby when they go to bed. The end of the story is open-ended. It is clear that she suffered rape and abuse in their marriage, but we do not know if she suffers it again at the end of the story. It is implied that her husband is going to rape; that is why she needs to protect herself, but the end is like a closing image.

The main themes of the story are sexuality and patriarchal issues because she prepares her husband's clothes before the wedding and forgets to sew the back of her own dress. " Getting ready was a terrible business. After supper, Frau Brechenmacher packed four of the five babies to bed, allowing Rosa to stay with her and help to polish the buttons of Herr Brechenmacher’s uniform. Then she ran over his best shirt with a hot iron, polished his boots, and put a stitch or two into his black satin necktie. " In her life, it is not the woman herself who is in the foreground; it is her husband and, in a way, her children. At the wedding, she gets very bored with her husband's behavior and speech. " Herr Brechenmacher alone remained standing—he held in his hands a big silver coffee-pot. Everybody laughed at his speech, except the Frau; everybody roared at his grimaces and at the way he carried the coffee-pot to the bridal pair, as if it were a baby he was holding." She also hears other women gossip about the bride, all unnecessary and disrespectful things, and suddenly there is a shifting part in the story. "Suddenly they all seemed strange to her" (Mansfield 2). Maybe she is reviewing her situation and what kind of domestic culture she lives in. That is why she walks in front of her husband after the wedding. It is like a rebellion because she always walks behind her husband.

In one of her interior monologues, she says, "Na, what is it all for?". This question has a lot of meaning because she questions her life and her role as a woman in this society. The sad point is that at the end of the story, when her husband Herr enters the room drunk, she covers her face like a baby. A woman who has been subjected to domestic rape and violence in their marriage. " She lay down on the bed and put her arm across her face like a child who expected to be hurt as Herr Brechenmacher lurched in." There is a metaphor in the way she covers her face with her hand, showing that she is an innocent woman but she is a victim of the male oppression of society.