Memory and Forgetting
The theme of memory and memory loss unites the experiences of both Mr. Woodifield and the boss. At the start of the text, memory is a key point of differentiation between the two. Mr. Woodifield cannot even remember what he wanted to tell the boss a minute ago. The boss pities him for his loss of memory and the implied loss of virility or masculinity. Yet by the end of the text, the boss suffers his own memory lapse. As he prepares to grieve his son, he finds that he cannot feel the sorrow he expects. He is then distracted by the plight of a fly that has fallen into his inkwell. By the time the fly is dead, he can no longer remember his grief. Thus Mansfield suggests that loss of memory is a coping mechanism for the boss, who maintains his own sense of masculine identity and status by choosing to forget his sorrow.
Death and Grief
Death, loss, and grief combine to form one of the most important themes in Katherine Mansfield's "The Fly." Both Mr. Woodifield and the boss have dead sons, a result of the ravages of World War I. Mansfield poignantly articulates the trauma of this loss in a paragraph from the boss' perspective. The boss speaks of the "violent fit[s] of weeping" and the feeling that, after death, "life itself had come to have no other meaning."
However, Mansfield also goes a step further, past a simple description of the emotions caused by loss and towards an analysis of the pathology of grief. The boss, for example, has suffered a trauma so great that he can no longer process it; when he sits down to grieve, he cannot cry. Instead, he enacts his emotions as violence on an innocent fly—a perverse manifestation of his loss. Mr. Woodifield, in contrast, retreats in on himself after suffering a very similar loss. Rather than bolstering himself with power, money, success, and violence, he is rendered feeble, pitiful, and weak. This contrast depicts the traumatic impact of death and the twin pathologies of grief.
Power and Status
Dynamics of power and status play out in different iterations throughout "The Fly." At the start of the text, the boss is pleased to show off his office—a symbol of his economic and social status—over Mr. Woodifield, who he sees as pitiful and "on his last pins." Later, however, readers learn that the boss' hold on the power that his job gives him is more tenuous than he let on to Mr. Woodifield. The effort behind his status, we learn, is now a burden after the death of his son. "How on earth could he have slaved, denied himself, kept going all those years" without the promise of his son continuing on after him? In other words, what was the point of his high status if his grief overpowers him?
However, there are paradoxes inherent to this lament. The boss has already boasted of the new decor in his office, suggesting that his business is doing well despite the feeling of despair and pointlessness he claims. He takes pride in his success, suggesting that he has indeed found something to live for other than the future of his son. By the end of the story, the boss resolves these feelings of weakness and his contradictory emotions by asserting his power over the fly. Previously consumed by depression, he now takes the role of lord and positions the fly as subject. By the time the fly is dead, he has forgotten his grief and returns to work.
Masculinity
"The Fly" is dominated by tropes and performances of conventional masculinity. Mr. Woodifield is presented as an emasculated old man, weak not only because of his stroke but also because the women in his life make decisions for him. The boss' office presents masculine coded imagery, with a "massive" bookcase and electric heating that looks like "sausages glowing... in the tilted copper pan." These images become symbolic of the boss' manliness: his ability to run a business and the accompanying wealth and status mark him as different from Mr. Woodifield. Further, the two share an illicit drink of whiskey, a stereotypically male drink, which Mr. Woodifield is denied at home by "the ladies."
