The Garden Party, de Katherine Mansfield

Résumé du document

The Garden Party is considered as Katherine Mansfield's most frequently anthologized short story. In this fiction story which was published in 1922, Mansfield draws the contrasted painting of childhood and adulthood, its innocence and experience, the upper and lower classes which was prevalent and a dominant factor in the early 20th century in colonial New Zealand. Mansfield ?has long enjoyed a reputation for near-perfection in the art of the short story' (Warren S. Walker, 1957) and even her rival, Virginia Woolf, recognized in her diary that she was ?jealous of her writing.' The story relates to the frantic preparations and aftermath of a garden party held by Laura, Meg and Jose, the three daughters of the Sheridan family. This is a dreamlike day, ?windless, warm and without a cloud', for the upper-class family to raise a marquee and for the daughters to learn how to be perfect party hostesses.

Extraits

[...] The Garden Party, which opens with dawn and ends at dusk, can be seen as an initiation rite for Laura, who achieves moral and emotional maturity as well as free-thought. It is the loss of innocence of a young, naive and “unformed” girl, learning her allotted role but yearning for something else. She does not understand the social conventions and constraints and eventually becomes aware of the vanity of the garden party did garden parties and baskets and lace frocks matter to him? He was far from all those things. He was wonderful, beautiful”). [...]

[...] The Garden Party, de Katherine Mansfield The Garden Party Katherine Mansfield The Garden Party in considered Katherine Mansfield's most frequently anthologized short story. In this fiction story published in 1922, Mansfield draws the contrasted painting of childhood and adulthood, innocence and experience, upper and lower classes in early 20th century colonial New Zealand. Mansfield long enjoyed a reputation for near-perfection in the art of the short story” (Warren S. Walker, 1957) and even her rival, Virginia Woolf, recognized in her diary that she was “jealous of her writing”. [...]

[...] Laura is an “artistic” and idealistic young girl brought up in the upper crust. Her sister, Jose, loves “giving orders to servants” and her frivolous mother's main preoccupation is to have enough lilies for the party. Whereas Jose is very scornful and assumes that the carter was a “drunken workman”, Laura is much more sensitive and is torn between the “social conformity” of snobbery toward the servants, copying clumsily her mother's haughty tone, and her human feelings of compassion. While the other characters seem to be empty, conventional and shallow, Laura appears as a freer spirit. [...]

[...] The garden party turns out to be a delightful afternoon, which the death of the neighbour could not besmirch. At twilight, Mrs. Sheridan suggests that Laura could bring some leftovers to the mourning widow, a “poor creature” in her own words. Laura then brings a basket to the grieving woman, who shows Laura the body of the dead. Although this close encounter with death and human distress bowls her over, Laura is overwhelmed by the beauty of the peacefully lying body. [...]