Her First Ball

by

Katherine Mansfield

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Illusion, Delusion, and Reality Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Youth, Novelty, and Aging Theme Icon
Gender and Society Theme Icon
Illusion, Delusion, and Reality Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Her First Ball, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Illusion, Delusion, and Reality Theme Icon

When Leila arrives at the ball, she finds it joyful and thrilling. But her naïve view doesn’t match reality—the ball is repetitive, even boring. No one is interested in Leila’s experience, and none of her partners are having fun. Despite this, Leila remains inside her glamorous illusion until she dances with an old man who reveals the true nature of the ball, showing her that youth and excitement inevitably fade, particularly for women. While this conversation initially rattles Leila, she quickly returns to her illusion of a thrilling, perfect ball—which is now an active delusion, a choice to ignore ugly reality. While the story ends with Leila living in fantasy, the clear implication is that her youthful illusions cannot last. Inevitably, she’ll have to confront reality, which will destroy her fragile joy.

Throughout the story, Leila perceives her circumstances to be grander than they are. For instance, Leila is jealous of her cousins, as she imagines them to be much closer than they are. In truth, their interactions are relatively shallow: Laurie and Laura discuss their upcoming dance, and Meg comments on Jose’s hair. But Leila wishes she had siblings of her own, and she therefore views the Sheridans’ small talk as the epitome of familial love. This demonstrates Leila’s tendency to see things as she wishes they were. Later, in the ladies’ dressing room, Leila ignores the reality of the scene in front of her. The room is pure chaos, and the women seem stressed and aggressive, but Leila dismisses this. “Because they were all laughing it seemed […] that they were all lovely,” she thinks, misinterpreting nervous laughter as evidence of happiness and beauty. Then, once the dance begins, Leila mistakes her partners’ small talk as interest in her experiences and opinions, though it’s clear they ask the same questions of everyone. Her first partner won’t engage with her observations about the dance floor, and her second is completely uninterested in the fact that this is her first dance, even though Leila herself is clearly excited about it. Despite that these men are essentially ignoring her, Leila’s joy and self-importance persist, as she remains enchanted with the ball and continues to try to converse with her partners.

But Leila must finally acknowledge reality during her conversation with the old man. As soon as he appears, it’s clear that he will pull Leila out of her fantasy. He’s incompatible with her illusion of a glamorous, joyful ball, since he’s conspicuously old, fat, and shabby. She tries to ignore this and be polite to him, but he doesn’t return the favor—intuiting that this is her first ball, he immediately reminds her that her joy is fleeting and she will someday grow old. This conversation forces Leila to notice something she had previously ignored: the older women in the room. They aren’t dancing; instead, they’re forced to sit on the sidelines and watch their daughters dance. Now that Leila has been told that she will one day join these women, she sees them sitting there and feels frightened. While her belief in her own significance had previously blinded her to the ball’s unhappier elements, she’s now forced to confront the bleak reality that awaits her.

While Leila does briefly acknowledge this horrible truth, she quickly returns to her illusions. Almost immediately after she and the old man stop dancing, Leila imagines herself as a “little girl” throwing a tantrum. She’s deeply upset by what she’s just heard, and imagining herself as a child again is an attempt to return to innocence and see the ball as she did before this conversation. It works; after a moment of dancing, Leila looks again at all the lights and flowers and feels her old joy return. The magnitude of her repression is evident in the story’s last line, when she bumps into the old man while dancing and doesn’t even recognize him—she’s so unable to grapple with what he’s told her that she refuses to acknowledge (even to herself) that she knows him at all. However, it’s clear that the man is right and Leila’s joy will be fleeting. While her initial impressions of the ball were mere misperception (since she didn’t have the context to understand what was really going on), now she is deliberately deluding herself by ignoring the harsh truths that the man revealed. Leila’s delusion of a thrilling and perfect ball cannot last; once the newness of the experience wears off, she will not be able to lose herself in the lights and flowers anymore. At that point, she’ll be forced to confront reality, and she’ll find the balls as boring and depressing as everyone else.

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Illusion, Delusion, and Reality Quotes in Her First Ball

Below you will find the important quotes in Her First Ball related to the theme of Illusion, Delusion, and Reality.
Her First Ball Quotes

Oh dear, how hard it was to be indifferent like the others! She tried not to smile too much; she tried not to care. But every single thing was so new and exciting…Meg’s tuberoses, Jose’s long loop of amber, Laura’s little dark head, pushing above her white fur like a flower through snow. She would remember for ever.

Related Characters: Leila (speaker), Meg Sheridan, Laurie Sheridan, Laura Sheridan, Jose Sheridan
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 100
Explanation and Analysis:

Here the crowd was so great there was hardly space to take off their things; the noise was deafening. Two benches on either side were stacked high with wraps. Two old women in white aprons ran up and down tossing fresh armfuls. And everybody was pressing forward trying to get at the little dressing-table and mirror at the far end.

A great quivering jet of gas lighted the ladies’ room. It couldn't wait; it was dancing already. When the door opened again and there came a burst of tuning from the drill hall, it leaped almost to the ceiling.

Dark girls, fair girls were patting their hair, tying ribbons again, tucking hand-kerchiefs down the fronts of their bodies, smoothing marble-white gloves. And because they were all laughing it seemed to Leila that they were all lovely.

Related Characters: Leila (speaker)
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 101
Explanation and Analysis:

She quite forgot to be shy; she forgot how in the middle of dressing she had sat down on the bed with one shoe off and one shoe on and begged her mother to ring up her cousins and say she couldn't go after all. And the rush of longing she had had to be sitting on the veranda of their forsaken up-country home, listening to the baby owls crying ‘More pork’ in the moonlight, was changed to a rush of joy so sweet that it was hard to bear alone. She clutched her fan, and, gazing at the gleaming, golden floor, the azaleas, the lanterns, the stage at one end with its red carpet and gilt chairs and the band in a corner, she thought breathlessly, ‘How heavenly; how simply heavenly!

Related Characters: Leila (speaker), The Old Man
Related Symbols: Baby Owls, The Dance Floor
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 101
Explanation and Analysis:

[…] instead of replying the fat man wrote something, glanced at her again. ‘Do I remember this bright little face?’ he said softly. ‘Is it known to me of yore?’ At that moment the band began playing; the fat man disappeared. He was tossed away on a great wave of music that came flying over the gleaming floor, breaking the groups up into couples, scattering them, sending them spinning…

Related Characters: The Old Man (speaker), Leila
Related Symbols: The Dance Floor
Page Number: 102
Explanation and Analysis:

‘Quite a good floor, isn’t it?’ drawled a faint voice close to her ear.

‘I think it’s most beautifully slippery,’ said Leila.

‘Pardon!’ The faint voice sounded surprised, Leila said it again. And there was a tiny pause before the voice echoed, ‘Oh, quite!’ and she was swung round again.

He steered so beautifully. That was the great difference between dancing with girls and men, Leila decided. Girls banged into each other, and stamped on each other’s feet; the girl who was gentleman always clutched you so.

Related Characters: Leila
Related Symbols: The Dance Floor
Page Number: 102
Explanation and Analysis:

‘Floor’s not bad,’ said the new voice. Did one always begin with the floor? And then, ‘Were you at the Neaves’ on Tuesday?’ And again Leila explained. Perhaps it was a little strange that her partners were not more interested. For it was thrilling. Her first ball! She was only at the beginning of everything. It seemed to her that she had never known what the night was like before. Up till now it had been dark, silent, beautiful very often—oh yes—but mournful somehow. Solemn. And now it would never be like that again—it had opened dazzling bright.

Related Characters: Leila
Related Symbols: The Dance Floor
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 103
Explanation and Analysis:

…‘you can’t hope to last anything like as long as that. No-o,’ said the fat man, ‘long before that you'll be sitting up there on the stage, looking on, in your nice black velvet. And these pretty arms will have turned into little short fat ones, and you’ll beat time with such a different kind of fan—a black ebony one.’ The fat man seemed to shudder. ‘And you’ll smile away like the poor old dears up there, and point to your daughter, and tell the elderly lady next to you how some dreadful man tried to kiss her at the club ball. And your heart will ache, ache’—the fat man squeezed her closer still, as if he really was sorry for that poor heart—‘because no one wants to kiss you now. And you’ll say how unpleasant these polished floors are to walk on, how dangerous they, are.”

Related Characters: The Old Man (speaker), Leila
Related Symbols: The Dance Floor
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 103
Explanation and Analysis:

Was this first ball only the beginning of her last ball, after all? At that the music seemed to change; it sounded sad, sad; it rose upon a great sigh. Oh, how quickly things changed! Why didn't happiness last for ever? For ever wasn’t a bit too long.

Related Characters: Leila, The Old Man
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 103
Explanation and Analysis:

Again the couples paraded. The swing doors opened and shut. Now new music was given out by the bandmaster. But Leila didn’t want to dance any more. She wanted to be home, or sitting on the veranda listening to those baby owls.

Related Characters: Leila, The Old Man
Related Symbols: Baby Owls
Page Number: 104
Explanation and Analysis:

But in one minute, in one turn, her feet glided, glided. The lights, the azaleas, the dresses, the pink faces, the velvet chairs, all became one beautiful flying wheel. And when her next partner bumped her into the fat man and he said, ‘Pardon,’ she smiled at him more radiantly than ever. She didn’t even recognise him again.

Related Characters: Leila, The Old Man
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 104
Explanation and Analysis: