Beryl

Beryl, a character in Katherine Mansfield’s “Prelude,” appears in Simone de Beauvoir’s account as an example of how a girl’s narcissistic self-adoration can intertwine with romantic longing. In the firelit dining room, she plays and sings while watching herself perform, imagining how she might appear to an observer beyond the window. The scene turns on a contradiction: Beryl can summon the gaze she desires in fantasy, but when the room is empty of an audience, her beauty seems to have no witness.

Identity and Introduction

Beryl is introduced through her absorption in her own image. Simone de Beauvoir presents her not simply as admiring her appearance, but as wanting to possess and praise her whole self. The account of Beryl in “Prelude” gives that idea a concrete scene: seated on a hassock by a wood fire, she plays the guitar and sings while also watching herself play and sing. Her attention divides between the music and the image of the girl making it.

The firelight picks out her shoes, the guitar’s ruddy belly, and her white fingers. Those details make the scene at once physical and composed, as though Beryl were arranging herself into a picture. Her self-regard is not detached from the world around her: she uses the light, the instrument, and her own gestures as parts of a performance, even though no one is present to watch it.

Self-Performance and the Imagined Audience

Beryl imagines stepping outside the window and seeing herself from there. In that imagined position, she expects that she would be struck by the sight of herself. The fantasy gives her a spectator’s perspective on her own performance: she can be the girl at the guitar and the imagined observer who recognizes the girl’s charm. Her self-image is thus formed not only in private looking, but through an anticipated response from someone else.

She plays the accompaniment more softly and stops singing, listening instead. That pause shifts the scene from display to anticipation. The passage then introduces the voice of an imagined admirer, recalling the first sight of a girl seated with her feet on a hassock and playing the guitar. Beryl flings up her head and begins to sing again. The imagined words supply the admiring audience her private performance lacked, and her renewed singing follows directly on their arrival in her mind.

The song begins with the line “Even the moon is aweary”. The detail places Beryl’s performance inside an atmosphere of romantic feeling, but the evidence does not show her completing the song or entering an actual romance. What it shows is the conjunction of self-display and romantic fantasy: she imagines herself as the memorable girl who might be described by an admirer, and the imagined admiration animates her return to song.

Interruption and the Mirror

A loud bang at the door breaks the scene. The servant girl’s face appears, and Beryl turns sharply against the interruption, unable to stand the girl. She runs into the dark drawing-room and walks up and down, restless. The passage does not explain the servant girl’s purpose or give the interruption any further consequence; its importance lies in the abrupt contrast between Beryl’s carefully imagined audience and the real person who intrudes upon her solitude.

In the drawing-room, Beryl finds a mirror over the mantel and looks at her pale shadow. She still sees herself as beautiful, but now the thought is shadowed by the absence of anyone to see her. The mirror confirms her self-image while exposing its limit: it can return her appearance, but cannot supply the admiring witness imagined in the earlier scene. The shift from the firelit dining room to the dark room, and from a fantasy of an admirer to a reflection without an audience, gives her self-adoration a moment of unease.

Smile and Thematic Significance

Beryl smiles, judges her smile adorable, and smiles again. The gesture renews her self-approval after the interruption, but it does not resolve the scene’s dependence on an imagined response. Her expression becomes both the thing she admires and a small performance staged for herself. Repetition makes the self-regard visible as an action: she does not merely possess a pleasing smile; she creates the opportunity to admire it again.

In Simone de Beauvoir’s discussion, Beryl’s episode illustrates how narcissism and desire for a woman’s romantic destiny can be closely joined. The sequence moves from watching herself perform, to imagining an admirer, to facing her reflection without a witness, and finally to smiling again. Beryl’s inward audience makes private self-adoration possible, while the imagined admirer supplies the romantic meaning that solitude cannot provide. The episode therefore holds together two positions: Beryl as the subject who watches and praises herself, and Beryl as the figure who imagines being seen and admired by another.