The Garden Party

THE GARDEN PARTY by Katherine Mansfield

The Garden Party deals with situations and behaviors as well as detailed aspects of social class. The story is developed in a high-class setting where parties and sumptuous events are considered to be a modus vivendi.

However there is the figure of Laura, the main character, who does not seem to be living in this parallel world where materialism and luxury are really meaningful and which do not usually let people related to it see what is happening in the real world. Laura shows circumstantial evidence of living and feeling different to the others who surround her, even having grown up in this circle of superficiality.

This year at Sheredian’s house the annual garden party is going to be organized and be under Laura’s control, and not by her mother who has always organized it before. It seems to be that Mrs. Sheredian wants to prove and put some responsibility on Laura’s shoulders, so that her daughter is able to initiate herself into this world full of paraphernalia and highly influenced by relations with the high standing society. For this purpose, and as anyone who is doing something for the first time would do, she (Laura) gives the impression to be insecure and disconcerted, even having always thought that she could arrange these sort of situations better than anyone else, she demonstrates it for instance when she talks to the workmen: “Good morning," she said, copying her mother's voice. But that sounded so fearfully affected that she was ashamed, and stammered like a little girl”

The first of many notable pieces of evidence of Laura’s personality it is described when she has to interact with workmen who come up to the house in order to load the marquee on the garden. The unexpected situation comes up when she feels nervous of talking to these men who are supposed to be inferior to her and who she has to give orders, furthermore it is equally important that she feels comfortable, she even thinks about her desire of knowing people like them and not having to relate with high class people who are not pleasant or smart and with whom she is supposed to deal with in her everyday life and it is with this words “Why couldn't she have workmen for her

friends rather than the silly boys she danced with and who came to Sunday night supper? She would get on much better with men like these” that the narrator expresses Laura’s feelings.

Whereas, at the beginning it is undeniable that Laura tries to act with decorum and conform to the code she’s been taught by, in order not to disappoint her mother’s expectations.

In this passage, through the narrator, Mansfield makes us (the readers) feel that she is feeling comfortable but disconcerted at the same time, and the reason might certainly be the classist education that she has received, where lower classes are inferior and contemptible as far as they have nothing to provide to high class people, except of their hard work and effort to get finally paid in order to survive. Alongside these feelings, her behaviour makes reference to the fact of feeling sorry in someway to the workmen, and so forth she makes an effort to make the party not that much sumptuous in the view of the workmen by playing the importance of the marquee dimensions down, trying to behave modestly as it is seen in this sentence "Only a very small band," said Laura gently. Perhaps he wouldn't mind so much if the band was quite small”.

Nevertheless, the most representative, important and meaningful situation of the play it is illustrated at the moment when two parallel worlds (the real and the superficial) converge in a point motivated by the fact of geographic proximity, which suggests a paradox, since while at Mrs. Sheridian’s a party is about to start, a low class neighbour (Mr.Scott) pass away. It is in this moment in time when Laura goes back to real world for a while, showing part of her personality and empathy, and this behaviour is apparently against what she has been taught; she starts thinking about the neighbour’s family and how they are feeling in moment of grief, even the idea of suspending the Garden party comes to her mind which demonstrate in this sentence: Jose!" she said, horrified, "however are we going to stop everything”, but her mother and sister do not agree with Laura’s intentions and they do not support her at all

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