The Man Without a Temperament is a 1920 short story by Katherine Mansfield. It was first published in Arts and Letters in Spring 1920, and later reprinted in Bliss and Other Stories.
Contents
Plot summary
Mrs Jinnie Salesby has tea with her husband, Robert. She receives a letter from Lottie, ill with neuritis, who says it is snowing in London. Then The Honeymoon Couple come back from fishing. The Salesbys go for a turn; she stops and sits while he goes on for a longer walk. He comes upon the Countess and the General in a carriage; they spurn him. He then walks on, imagines he is going back home for dinner, with Dennis and Beaty as guests. Instead, he gets back to his wife and they return to the dining-room for dinner, with all the other couples.
Characters
Major themes
Literary significance
The text is written in the modernist mode, without a set structure, and with many shifts in the narrative.