The Garden Party: Short Story

By Katherine Mansfield

Laura Sheridan find her perspective of life altered when, following her family’s garden party, she visits the Sheridan’s neighbours to give her condolences on the passing of Mr. Scott. Katherine Mansfield’s “The Garden Party” captures the fleeting nature of youth and the unforseen turns that life can take.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Apr 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781443435031

Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield was a popular New Zealand short-story writer best known for the stories "The Woman at the Shore," "How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped," "The Doll’s House," and her twelve-part short story "Prelude," which was inspired by her happy childhood. Although Mansfield initially had her sights set on becoming a professional cellist, her role as editor of the Queen’s College newspaper prompted a change to writing. Mansfield’s style of writing revolutionized the form of the short story at the time, in that it depicted ordinary life and left the endings open to interpretation, while also raising uncomfortable questions about society and identity. Mansfield died in 1923 after struggling for many years with tuberculosis.

Book preview

The Garden Party

And after all the weather was ideal. They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden party if they had ordered it. Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud. Only the blue was veiled with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimes in early summer. The gardener had been up since dawn, mowing the lawns and sweeping them, until the grass and the dark flat rosettes where the daisy plants had been seemed to shine. As for the roses, you could not help feeling they understood that roses are the only flowers that impress people at garden parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing. Hundreds, yes, literally hundreds, had come out in a single night; the green bushes bowed down as though they had been visited by archangels.

Breakfast was not yet over before the men came to put up the marquee.

Where do you want the marquee put, mother?

My dear child, it’s no use asking me. I’m determined to leave everything to you children this year. Forget I am your mother. Treat me as an honoured guest.

But Meg could not possibly go and supervise the men. She had washed her hair before breakfast, and she sat drinking her coffee in a green turban, with a dark wet curl stamped on each cheek. Jose, the butterfly, always came down in a silk petticoat and a kimono jacket.

You’ll have to go, Laura; you’re the artistic one.

Away Laura flew, still holding her piece of bread and butter. It’s so delicious to have an excuse for eating out of doors, and besides, she loved having to arrange things; she always felt

Reviews for The Garden Party

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a short story that is on the list of 1001 Books to Read Before You Die. The group on LibraryThing that consists of people trying to read the 1001 books (actually over 1300 on all editions of the list) suggested that we pick a book that we had never heard of before to read in November 2020. This fit the bill for me; in fact I was unfamiliar with the author as well. After I finished the story, which is only 12 pages long, I looked at the Wikipedia entry on Katherine Mansfield and she seems like an interesting woman for her time period at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. She was only 34 when she died in 1923, just two years after writing this story. She developed pulmonday tuberculosis and in the days before penicillin (it wasn't discovered until 1928) that was pretty much a death sentence.The story itself starts out on an idyllic summer day in rural England. A garden party is to be held on the grounds of a manor house with all the attendant food, drink and music. Just before it is due to commence one of the daughters of the household hears of the accidental death of a working class person that lives close to the manor house. Her instinct is to cancel the party but she is convinced that the family of the deceased man won't mind if they go ahead. After the party is over her mother sends her to the man's house with a basket full of left-overs from the party. The daughter is quite affected by seeing the body of the accident victim laid out "There lay a young man, fast asleep--sleeping so soundly, so deeply, that he was far, far away...Oh, so remote, so peaceful. He was dreaming. Never wake him up again. His head was sunk in the pillow, his eyes were closed; they were blind under the closed eyelids. He was given up to his dream. What did garden-parties and baskets and lace frocks matter to him? He was far from all those things. He was wonderful, beautiful. While they were laughing and while the band was playing, this marvel had come to the lane. Happy...happy...All is well, said that sleeping face. This is just as it should be. I am content. But all the same you had to cry..."The story is very well constructed and conveys a snapshot of class differences in the early 20th century in England.