Mansfield’s Class Awareness in “The Garden Party” ~ Mini Blog

Thursday, April 16, 2020

Mansfield’s Class Awareness in “The Garden Party”

Katherine Mansfield is a socially conscious writer who sought to make us aware of the various conflicts prevailing in society. And this social consciousness is the core idea in Katherine Mansfield's celebrated short story, The Garden Party. The subject short story depicts considerably well the division between the rich and the poor. Three incidents can be identified where the writer has stated her attitude towards contemporary society.

Mansfield’s Class Awareness in “The Garden Party”

The first one is the workman episode. While the Sheridans are having breakfast, Laura is supervising the workers who have to put up the marquee. She authoritatively addresses the workers, in an attempt to mimic her mother. She likes one of the workers and because of this, she thinks all the workers are charming and nice and she feels,

" It's all the fault, she decided, as the tall fellow drew something on the back of an envelope, something that was to be looped up or left to hang, of these absurd class distinctions. Well, for her part, she didn't feel them. Not a bit, not an atom..."

Thus like Laura, Mansfield also did not approve of this giving emphasis on social distinctions.

Next, we find Mansfield's view towards society in the conflict of opinion about cancelling the party between Laura and her mother and sister. Laura's mother and sister did not consider the working young man to be significant enough to pay attention. To Jose, he was a drunken man, "You won't bring a drunken workman back to life by being sentimental, ". She even did not know the name of this man and yet called him drunk. To Mrs. Sheridan, it was annoying that Laura was paying attention to his tragic death,

"People like that don't expect sacrifices from us. And it's not very sympathetic to spoil everybody's enjoyment as you're doing now"

Surely the writer feels that the view of Laura was the right one.

Thirdly, from the narrative of the story we come to know that the Little Sheridans were forbidden to mix with the poor children, "because of the revolting language and of what they might catch."

In all these cases we see that the writer does not approve of the idea of apartheid between the rich and the poor in society. When rich people express low ideas about the poor they only demean their human characteristics not the poor. Laura dreams of a society where there will be no class distinction. This is the message that the writer has tried to give her readers in this story. If most rich persons were like Laura then society would have been a much better place.