SOURCE: “Mansfield's ‘The Fly,’” in The Explicator, Vol. 5, No. 7, May, 1947, item 53.

In the following essay, Bledsoe dismisses the interpretations of the story offered the critics Stallman and Jacobs, and concludes that “The Fly” is really about the selfishness and cruelty of mankind.

I believe that Katherine Mansfield's “The Fly” can be explained without recourse either to a devious symbolism (EXP., April, 1945, III, 49) or to biographical reference (EXP., Feb., 1947, V, 32). Though the former was provocative and the latter cogent, the writers of both seem to me to have missed the woods for the trees. They agree that this is a story of the conquest of time over grief, which it is not; they are therefore inevitably led into irreconcilable conflicts of symbols and significances.

While the boss toys with the fly he escapes his grief. But it is not time that cures him, nor does time release the fly...