In Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp's "Bliss," the women's roles can be viewed as a very critical portrayalof women in general.  This characterization is directly linked to Ms. Mansfield's personal upbringing, her rebellious nature, her history of broken relationships, and the era in which she lived.  Her contemporaries were writers such as George Sands, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf.

The main female characters in "Bliss" are Bertha, flat character that we know little about except she feels full of bliss toward her life and feels like a major progression is about to take place in her life; Mrs. Knight who appears to feel she is a talented artist but can't put an outfit together, and Pearl Fulton who has the nerve to advance a promise of friendship to Bertha, even though she is having an affair with Bertha's husband.

Bertha looks like a fool, Mrs. Knight a egocentric woman with no talent, and Pearl is simply a woman having an affair with a married man.  Not a very good portrayal of women in general.