In ‘the Garden Party’, Katherine Mansfield presents the rich to show unawareness of the poor within their neighbourhood in order to contain their happiness. The main character, Laura starts off within a middle class bubble that she has been isolated within all her life. She has been protected which has resulted in her unawareness of the ‘real’ world. Within the short story, the Sheridan family are organising their party, when it takes a turn for the worse for Laura. She is faced with death. Laura is the only one concerned at this point by the death of Mr. Scott, a local working class man. However, her sisters are not touched by this tragedy as her sister, Jose responds to Laura with "Stop the garden-party? My dear Laura, don 't be so absurd”
…show more content…
Towards the end of the short story, her brother Laurie whom yet again tries to navigate her away from the pain by calling it “awful” rather than addressing her feelings and letting Laura acknowledge the lower class neighbourhood yet again greets Laura. Mansfield was born as ‘into a commercially and socially expansive family’, similarly to the character of Laura. Her father, Harold had become a noteworthy success in insurance, company directorships, and finally the Bank of New Zealand. This foreshadows the reason why Mansfield chooses to show a strong theme of social class struggle within ‘The Garden Party’ as she was often neglected as a child, due to her position within the siblings and like Laura was often an outsider. This closely links with the Sheridans ignoring Laura, due to her wanting to go against her mothers’ middle class values. Overall, the family chose to ignore the human significance of Mr. Scott’s death and therefore showed the selfishness of the middle class which Mansfield herself may have been critical of. However this does not mean they determined his …show more content…
L.P Hartley presents the rich to be negative through the manipulation of two characters in love, those two being Ted who is a working class farmer who lives across the lake and Marian, the daughter to the host of the Brandham Hall where Leo is staying for the summer. As the story is a flashback of his past, Leo returns to the hall, where he stayed in the summer of 1900 and at this point, is reminded by the terrible things he was accused of, the people whom he was blackmailed by and the scars that still remain in his life. This is shown through his words of ‘during my breakdown, I was like a train going through a tunnel’ which suggests that the love affair resulted in Leo having breakdown in later life, as when he finds himself back at the house is reminded by the fact he was helping a friend which constantly taunts him in his mind. Leo returns, visiting the Trimingham family graves but before he leaves the hall, he visits Marian. With them both reminiscing on their past, Marian confronts him with “you came out of the blue to make us happy” followed with “we made you happy, didn’t we?” which suggests that Marian is unaware of the consequence her relationship with Ted had towards Leo’s happiness which resulted in causing him harm to benefit only herself, although in the end it did not work how she
Towards the end of the short story, her brother Laurie whom yet again tries to navigate her away from the pain by calling it “awful” rather than addressing her feelings and letting Laura acknowledge the lower class neighbourhood yet again greets Laura. Mansfield was born as ‘into a commercially and socially expansive family’, similarly to the character of Laura. Her father, Harold had become a noteworthy success in insurance, company directorships, and finally the Bank of New Zealand. This foreshadows the reason why Mansfield chooses to show a strong theme of social class struggle within ‘The Garden Party’ as she was often neglected as a child, due to her position within the siblings and like Laura was often an outsider. This closely links with the Sheridans ignoring Laura, due to her wanting to go against her mothers’ middle class values. Overall, the family chose to ignore the human significance of Mr. Scott’s death and therefore showed the selfishness of the middle class which Mansfield herself may have been critical of. However this does not mean they determined his …show more content…
L.P Hartley presents the rich to be negative through the manipulation of two characters in love, those two being Ted who is a working class farmer who lives across the lake and Marian, the daughter to the host of the Brandham Hall where Leo is staying for the summer. As the story is a flashback of his past, Leo returns to the hall, where he stayed in the summer of 1900 and at this point, is reminded by the terrible things he was accused of, the people whom he was blackmailed by and the scars that still remain in his life. This is shown through his words of ‘during my breakdown, I was like a train going through a tunnel’ which suggests that the love affair resulted in Leo having breakdown in later life, as when he finds himself back at the house is reminded by the fact he was helping a friend which constantly taunts him in his mind. Leo returns, visiting the Trimingham family graves but before he leaves the hall, he visits Marian. With them both reminiscing on their past, Marian confronts him with “you came out of the blue to make us happy” followed with “we made you happy, didn’t we?” which suggests that Marian is unaware of the consequence her relationship with Ted had towards Leo’s happiness which resulted in causing him harm to benefit only herself, although in the end it did not work how she