THE SAME JOB: NOTES ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN VIRGINIA WOOLF AND KATHERINE MANSFIELD.

Mansfield, Katherine, 1888-1923; Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941; Authors; Friendship; Vision; Sensory perception

"We have the same job, Virginia," writer Katherine Mansfield wrote six months after her first meeting with writer Virginia Woolf, "and it is really very curious and thrilling that we should both be after so nearly the same thing." While the extraordinary similarities between her work and Woolf's may have seemed thrilling at first, they were also profoundly unsettling since they threatened to disturb that crucial sense of uniqueness which each writer needed to feel about her own vision. The friendship with Mansfield, however, also allowed Woolf to confirm and define various perceptions she had just begun to articulate. Mansfield's tragic death at thirty-four was in some ways a relief to Woolf since it removed a rival, but, because they had worked at that same job, Woolf also felt depressed by her death.