dissatisfaction with the lack of passion in their relationship. His actions betray his deceitful nature: not only has he been hiding the affair, but he also feigns dislike for Pearl to keep it a secret. The risk Harry takes by kissing Pearl in their home, along with his efforts to conceal his true emotions, indicates that he and Pearl have a profound connection.

Change and transformation are subtle themes woven into the story. Bertha's overwhelming sense of joy and her newfound attraction to her husband highlight a major shift in her life. She questions whether her feelings of bliss throughout the day have been leading to this intensified affection for her husband. By the conclusion of the tale, she is eager for the guests to depart so she can be alone with Harry.

However, Bertha's evolution into a more sensual person is suddenly disrupted when she discovers her husband kissing Pearl Fulton. She realizes she can no longer perceive her world as flawless, nor can she advance into a renewed relationship with Harry. When she rushes to the window to gaze at the pear tree, she observes it is "as lovely as ever and as full of flower and as still." This signifies that Bertha's transformation will be paused, as the pear tree—which symbolizes Bertha—remains unchanged.

The theme of modernity plays a crucial role in the narrative. Bertha often refers to aspects of her life, such as her relationships with her husband and friends, as being distinctly modern. Yet, Bertha's interpretation of modernity seems to embrace elements that are superficial, shallow, and deceptive. She justifies her unsatisfactory sexual relationship with her husband by labeling it as ‘‘modern,’’ since they share a strong friendship. For Bertha, a modern marriage doesn't need to be founded on love or attraction but can instead be built on the friendship that binds two individuals.

This view of contemporary marriage creates tension with Harry, who grows increasingly unhappy with their arrangement. Even their parenting style is considered modern. Bertha spends little time with her daughter, leaving her under the care of a disgruntled nanny, while Harry shows little interest in his child.

Bertha’s friends are also portrayed as epitomes of modernity, yet they seem utterly ridiculous. Mrs. Knight is described as resembling both a giant monkey and a banana peel. Her modern decorating choices, such as curtains with embroidered french fries and chairbacks shaped like frying pans, are seen as garish and unattractive. The plays and poems discussed by the guests come across as gloomy and pretentious, with the satire reaching a peak in Eddie Warren’s admiration for a poem that begins, "Why Must it Always be Tomato Soup?" Instead of being "modern" and "exciting," the guests and their interests appear overly extravagant and absurd.

As an observer of human behavior, Katherine Mansfield is a psychological realist who analyzes impressionistically a single moment in her characters’ lives. Bertha’s moment of bliss makes her want, for a moment, to touch her husband. Later, she has a “miraculous” moment when she is certain Pearl feels what she feels. The time setting for the story is only a few hours—a moment in Bertha’s life but one prefigured in her past, and one that presages her future. Bertha’s moment of bliss produces another, inseparable, key moment: her “strange . . . terrifying” realization that she desires her husband.

Complex possibilities make a single interpretation of this story indefensible. An interesting possibility is to read “Bliss” solely as an expression of Bertha’s moment of bliss from start to finish; from neither Bertha, from whose point of view the reader experiences the elements of the story, nor the author does the reader receive clear, literal expressions of Bertha’s having negative feelings about the scene between Harry and Pearl at the end. Mansfield’s intentionally ambiguous story raises many possibilities but no one to the exclusion of all others. Several questions arise. Why is Bertha “overcome, suddenly, by a feeling of bliss” on this particular day? Is it by cruel chance that on the same day she will, ironically, discover her husband’s bliss with another woman? Would she have been able to sustain the feeling of bliss alone that night when, “for the first time,” she desired him? Would the rushes of bliss cease tomorrow as suddenly as they had struck her today? Mansfield seems to insist that Bertha, and the reader, remain subject to the contingencies of each new day.

The reader follows Bertha’s unconscious use of several psychological devices: Instead of expressing her feelings, she, as is her habit, represses them; instead of acting on her feelings, she projects them onto other people, especially Pearl; instead of authenticating her own identity, she excessively identifies with Pearl, whom she imagines is her opposite. Does bliss overwhelm her on the particular day because of her subconscious anticipation of seeing and intensely identifying with Pearl, her ideal, sensual self? The only different, new element in her life on this day is Pearl. Faulty or not (considering her discovery at the end), Bertha’s perception that she has guessed Pearl’s mood, instantly, exactly, is a clear example of the way she projects her own mood onto another person. That projection is most powerful as she stands close to Pearl at the window admiring the pear tree. Having so perfectly identified with Pearl for a moment (as the pear tree’s blossoms are perfect only for a moment), Bertha feels, for a moment, desire for her husband. Scrutiny of this psychological process raises the possibility that Bertha, frightened of her “terrible” desire for Harry, projects onto Pearl and Harry the natural consummation of her own feelings by misperceiving the significance of their gestures in the hall at the end of the story. Perhaps the distance between Bertha and Harry and Pearl contributes to the misconception. Bertha’s perceptions and emotions throughout the evening would predispose her to project impulsively onto the scene what she believes, or only imagines, she sees.

Mansfield then shows the reader how—even in a moment, or a series of moments clustered in a brief time—faulty human perceptions generate rare, romantic emotions that, given the nature of their stimulus, may be doomed to shatter against reality in disillusionment. Feelings such as “absolute bliss,” even when one willfully tries to sustain them, as Bertha does, are rare and fleeting, but, as Eddie the poet tells her just after her observation of the Harry-Pearl scene, mundane “tomato soup is dreadfully eternal.” Nevertheless, such moments as Bertha’s moment of bliss have their own psychological reality and intensity before external reality does its work on them, and Mansfield seems to regard those moments with awe and wonder.