THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING CALLED MR REGINALD PEACOCK
Katherine Mansfield does not select her main character's name carelessly: Mr. Reginald Peacock, a full name that distills social climbing, sovereignty, and bravado. In her intention to highlight the clash between public and private identity and to give the story a comic yet tragic tone, Mansfield introduces the character; she even gives him the story's title, as a man of status.
Firstly, she honours him with the respectful title of Mr; therefore, the reader may create an image of a man of high achievement and social relevance. Furthermore, she opts for a name, Reginald, whose origin is Germanic, linked to royalty and leadership; again, she plays with satire to mock his thirst for control and power. It is someone who offers wise counsel; our Reginald in this story is a smarty man, imbued in airs of grandeur, and admired with an artistic gaze by many people, especially women. It is not an issue for him to advise his pupils, but not voidless; his flatteries and feedback are not at all constructive but lapidating, mockery, just to perpetuate his ego to continue growing, despite his remarks considering himself an anti-vain man (“Not that he was vain- he couldn't stand vain men-no).
The fact of choosing as the final name the most ridiculed name is not casual; we can perceive a gradation in his names, from the most respectful ones to the most absurd: peacocks are a symbol of superficiality, strut, and vanity. Vanity is associated with another symbol, mirrors, present in the story in a very significant part when teaching Betty Brittle, and placing her in front of the mirror, so he can see his powerful self-reflection ("Do you ever practise before a glass?" asked Reginald. "You ought to, you know... Come over here." They went over to the mirror and stood side by side “).
This social admiration, and his self-determination contrasts strongly with his cruelty, resentment adressing his wife and son (the very first lines of the short-story are a clear example of his dominant masculine attitudes), evidencing Mainsfield's dual aim: tragedy and comedy, private and public identity.
The final scene of the story could be interpreted as the moral of the story: he comes back home after spending a night keeping company with high-class people, drinking champagne, surrounded by an artificial reality, however, he sits on the side of the bed, and regarding his wife, he seems to be enlightened by a spell of reality ( “If only I felt that she was ere to come back to-that I could confide in her..”), but his blindness due to vanity does not allow him to land and walk along real life. (“ But of all those splendid things he had to say, not one could he utter. [...]the only words he could get out were: “Dear lady, I should be so charmed-so charmed”
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