The Garden Party (short story)

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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]

1 Plot introduction
2 Plot summary
3 Characters in The Garden Party
4 Major themes
5 References to other works
6 Literary significance
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Plot introduction

The Sheridans are getting ready for a garden party when they learn a neighbour has died.

[edit] Plot summary

The Sheridans are getting ready for a garden party. Laura is supposed to be in charge, but the workers appear to know better, and Mrs Sheridan has ordered lillies to be delivered for the party without her approval. Miss Jose tests the piano, and then sings a song in case she is asked to do so again later, the furniture is moved round, and then they learn that a poor neighbor, Mr Scott, who lives in a cottage near their main entrance, has died. While Laura fathoms the party should be called off, neither Jose nor her mother agree. The party is a success, and later Mrs Sheridan decides it would be good of them to bring a basket full of leftovers to the Scotts's house. She summons Laura to do so. The latter is let into the poor neighbors' house by Mrs Scott's daughters, then sees the matron herself and her late husband's corpse. The look in his eyes brings her to tears, and she runs off back to her own house, where she sobs into Laurie's arms.

[edit] Characters in The Garden Party

Mrs Sheridan, the mother
Laura Sheridan, one of three daughters
the workers, who put up a marquee in the garden
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 house servant
the florist, who delivers lillies ordered by Mrs Sheridan
cook, the house cook
Godber's man, the delivery-man who brings in the cakes
Mr Scott, a lower-class neighbour who has just died
Mrs Scott, the deceased's widow.
Em, Mrs. Scott's sister

[edit] 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 poor's dwellings, which spoil their vista.

[edit] 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'.

[edit] Literary significance

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

[edit] References

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