In "Je ne parle pas francais," Mansfield comes closest to writing the kind of stream of consciousness fiction pioneered by Joyce's Ulysses (1922) and Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (1929). However, the story is not one long monologue without punctuation and paragraphing. It is broken up into short units, reflecting the narrator's shifting focus of attention which moves freely back and forth between the present setting, past events, and philosophical statements.