The Garden Party is a 1922 short story by Katherine Mansfield. It was first published in the Saturday Westminster Gazette on 4 February 1922, then in the Weekly Westminster Gazette on 18 February 1922. It later appeared in The Garden Party and Other Stories.^[1]

Plot summary

The Sheridan family is preparing to host a garden party. Laura is supposed to be in charge, but has trouble with the workers who appear to know better, and her mother (Mrs. Sheridan) has ordered lilies to be delivered for the party without Laura's approval. Her sister Jose tests the piano, and then sings a song in case she is asked to do so again later. After the furniture is rearranged, they learn that their neighbor Mr. Scott has died. While Laura believes the party should be called off, neither Jose nor their mother agrees. The party is a success, and later Mrs. Sheridan decides it would be good to bring a basket full of leftovers to the Scotts' house. She summons Laura to do so. Laura is shown into the poor neighbors' house by Mrs. Scott's sister, then sees the widow and her late husband's corpse. She is enamored of the young man, finding him beautiful and compelling, and when she leaves to find her brother waiting for her she is unable to complete the sentence, "Isn't life..."

Characters in The Garden Party

• Mrs. Sheridan,
• Laura Sheridan, one of three girls(main)
• The workers, who put up a marquee in the garden
• Mr Sheridan, who goes to work that day to join the party later that evening
• Meg Sheridan, a second daughter
• Jose Sheridan, a third daughter
• Laurie, a brother
• Kitty Maitland, a friend of Laura and a party guest
• Sadie, a female house servant
• Hans, a male house servant
• the florist, who delivers lilies ordered by Mrs Sheridan
• Cook, a cook
• Godber's man, the delivery-man who brings in the yummy cakes
• Mr. Scott, a lower-class neighbor who has just died
• Em Scott, the deceased's widow.
• Unnamed referred to as 'Mrs. Scott's sister'Jennifer Nadine

Major themes

Class consciousness. Laura feels a certain sense of kinship with the workers and again with the Scotts. Her mother thinks it would embarrass them to receive flowers. An omniscient narrator also explains that as children Laura, Jose, Meg and Laurie were not allowed to go near the poors' dwellings, which spoil their vista.

Illusion versus reality. Laura is stuck in a world of high-class housing, food, family and garden parties. She then discovers her neighbour from a lower class has died and she clicks back to reality upon discovering death.

Sensitivity and insensitivity Death and Life. The writer masterfully handles the theme of death and life in the short story. The realization of Laura that life is simply marvellous shows death of human beings in a positive light. Death and life co-exist and death seems to Laura merely a sound sleep far away from troubles in human life.

References to other works

• The names Meg, Jose and Laurie may be related to Louisa May Alcott's 1868 Little Women.^[2]
• The characters are also used in Her First Ball.
• The events of the story are based on the Greek myth of Persephone.

Literary significance

The text is written in the modernist mode, without a set structure, and with many shifts in the narrative.

References

1. ^ Katherine Mansfield, Selected Stories, Oxford World's Classics, explanatory notes
2. ^ Katherine Mansfield, Selected Stories, Oxford World's Classics, explanatory notes

External links

• Full Text