Katherine Mansfield The Garden Party Analysis

In Katherine Mansfield’s “The Garden Party,” the fourth reasons that show the rich Sheridans think they are better than the poor Scotts. However, the Sheridans thought the Scotts wanted their hand-me-downs. Since the Scotts were poor and the Sheridans were rich, they thought they were giving them goods of value. “There on the table were all those sandwiches, cakes, puffs, all un-eaten, all going to be wasted. Mrs. Sheridan had one of her brilliant ideas. I know, she said. “Let’s make up a basket. Let’s send that poor creature some of this perfectly good food. At any rate, it will be the greatest treat for the children. Again, how curious, she seemed to be different from them all. To take scraps from their party. Would the poor woman really

like that” (77-78)? The Sheridans thought they were superior to the Scotts since the Sheridans have scraps leftover from their garden party they feel their scraps is improved compared to the Scotts meals they have available to eat. No one wishes to receive another person’s leftovers. Therefore, the Sheridans are wealthy; however, the Sheridans should have had their cooks prepare fresh food and give it to the Scotts rather than give them food that was leftovers from their party. Furthermore, the Sheridans call their selves saving money and not wasting food because they are giving the food to a needy family. When Laura dropped off the basket to the Scotts, she did not worry about getting the basket back; therefore, the Sheridans did not need the basket back because the Sheridans belief that the Scotts are filthy, and the Sheridans do not want to take a chance and catch nothing from them. Moreover, they would rather that the Scotts possess the basket. Mansfield states Laura experience that life is a garden party (62). However, Mansfield, also, states when Laura went downhill she acknowledges something other than life since the underprivileged do not desire to make anything of their lives, and the underprivileged do not identify how to live, but recognizes only how to die. However, death is universal, but life is not (63). Unfortunately, there is a widespread of people that dies, but not a widespread of people that live.

When Laura was sent down to the dead man’s cottage with a basket of leftovers, she sees happiness and beauty in the dead man’s face, and the strange intellect of life hits her straight in the face (114). The man is dead, but he seems to be sleeping peacefully. Furthermore, Katherine Mansfield is a profound artist that has a superior way with words. Mansfield could get to the precise certainty in her writing (43). However, she does it in minor, insignificant little bits and pieces of experience which no one but a delicate artist would indicate or think the value of noticing (43). “In “The Garden Party”, she talks about that absolute inward look that only comes from whipped cream. I do not know whether you feel there, as I do, the intense absorption that is partly the joy of eating whipped cream, partly to the fear of messing. Her similes can be exactly true, so that they are not similes at all but true metaphor. In one of her letters she talks about a “sea like quilted silk” and a whole flock of little winds”. All this is “purity”, perhaps, on a lower level, but it is part of her quality” (43). In Mansfield’s way of writing, she makes her collection of books easily to read and understand. Moreover, Mansfield’s short stories are superlative because a vast number of stories can be

read in a short period of time.