EvoWarrior5
09-25-2013, 05:26 PM
Hello to everybody who reads this!
I live in the Netherlands and I'm currently attending University for English Language and Culture, first year. First off I hope I posted this in the right section, as this is a section for book reviews, I could not find any section for analyses on Short Stories.
Anyways, one of the courses I get is reading Literature and this week during the session we discussed the short story 'The Garden Party' by Katherine Mansfield. While discussing some of the questions we got during the lecture, we may have stumbled upon a rather... interesting discovery. I will explain all about it in my analysis. I wanted to post it somewhere so other people could look at it and tell me, first off, what you think about my analysis (is it well-written, what did I miss, what should I improve, grammar mistakes, etc.) and secondly, whether you agree with our interpretation.
Once again I hope I posted this in the correct section, and I hope you enjoy reading my first attempt at an analysis.
“He stepped out of the shadow.”
The Garden Party – An analysis
When reading the garden party, at first it may seem like a happy story about the good life and tea parties. However, there is much more to the story than just that. When you progress through the story you will find that it gets increasingly darker along the way, because what starts out as a simple garden party ends with a visit to a poor man who had died on that same day. The adjective ‘poor’ may seem useless here, but the short story The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield contains class differences as a major theme.
In the Sheridan family, nobody but Laura really seems to care about people below their class. The mother is in fact fairly intolerant towards lower class people, indicated by the fact that she referred to the dead man as a “drunken workman”. She also did not take the feelings of her poor neighbours into account, stating that she saw no reason why they should cancel their party.
But just as much as, if not more so than class, symbolism seems to be a big part of the story as well, depicted mostly by two things: Jose’s song and Laura’s hat. To start off, Jose’s song. She sings about an awakening, which is exactly what seems to be what Laura has at the end of the story. The ending is pretty open and is left open to interpretation, but what seems to be clear is that she has learned a lesson about life. Not only did this seem to be her first experience with death, she also interacted with her poor neighbours for the first time. It is no coincidence that Jose’s song was about an awakening, because not only does Laura have an awakening herself at the end of the story, visiting a man who has died is called a ‘wake’.
Secondly, Laura’s hat. Hats were commonly used for symbolism in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In this story it is no different. Laura receives a black hat with gold daisies from her mother, which she wears for the rest of the story. The daisies are the key here; symbolically speaking, they stand for innocence and gentleness, two characteristics that definitely describe Laura. They also depict naivety, and looking at Laura it can be argued that she is pretty naïve. She doesn’t always realise what is happening around her, and she has her first experience with death and lower classes in the story after always having been ‘trapped’ in her pretty much utopian house and family. The black colour of the hat can be seen as foreshadowing to her visiting the dead man’s house, as a black hat is usually worn at wakes. A little contrast that is worth noting in the story is the fact that the workman Laura was speaking with was described to wear a straw hat. This is compared to her hat a very simple and cheap hat, indicating that his class is lower than hers.
Now let’s take a look at a completely different aspect of the story, namely Laurie. He is introduced only after a little while into the story, and in my view he is the most intriguing character of all in this short story. He seems to be an inspiration to Laura, and is very much like her, too. But is he actually a real and alive person? From the way I interpret it, that remains questionable. He may in fact be merely a figure of Laura’s imagination. It’s like he is her, but only as a boy. As if he created her to be a brother she could talk with and have fun with. As can be seen in the story she does not seem to interact much with her sisters. Not to forget the fact that she grows up practically imprisoned in the house with nobody to talk to but her family who she doesn’t seem to be on the same page with. It may just be that she created Laurie as a way to escape that life.
Now to take a look at Laurie’s role in the story. His main role seems to be that he encourages Laurie, as seen in certain parts of the story such as this one:
"Ra-ther," said Laurie's warm, boyish voice, and he squeezed his sister too, and gave her a gentle push. "Dash off to the telephone, old girl."
Looking further, one may notice that Laurie only interacts with Laura in the story. At no point does Laurie speak or even seem to notice or be noticed by any other person. When we meet him in the story he is brushing his hat with father, but neither of them were speaking until Laura got in and she started talking to Laurie. What is more, just before that somebody calls her downstairs to get to the phone, and after that she speaks with Laurie. It could be argued that, if Laurie is just imaginary, how could he have called her downstairs, unless she had heard the phone herself already? The key here is that it is not specified just who called her downstairs:
"Laura, Laura, where are you? Telephone, Laura!" a voice cried from the house.
“A voice” indicates that anybody could have called her. Her father was present when she got downstairs, it may well have been him to call her down. We cannot be sure.
More symbolic evidence lies, once again, in the hat and the daisies. Not only does the daisy symbolise innocence and gentleness, there used to be a Victorian custom (which is still used), where a woman plucks the petals off of a daisy, determining whether a loved one would love her back or not. This may be a hint towards her love being lost, which could cause her to create Laurie to try and fill the void. What points towards Laura actually having lost a love is this particular line right before Jose was about to start singing her song:
“The piano burst out so passionately that Jose's face changed. She clasped her hands. She looked mournfully and enigmatically at her mother and Laura as they came in.”
Now why would she look ‘mournfully’ when Laura and her mother come in? Possibly because she thought that hearing the song she was going to sing would remind Laura of her lost love.
Thank you for your attention.
~ Evo
A little sidenote: at some point I claimed that hats were commonly used for symbolism in the nineteenth and twentieth century. This is something I heard in class and not something I have an actual source for. I tried looking it up but couldn't find anything on the matter, so sorry for that!
(Also I'll admit I wasn't too sure how to end it, I'm not very good with closing my work off)
I live in the Netherlands and I'm currently attending University for English Language and Culture, first year. First off I hope I posted this in the right section, as this is a section for book reviews, I could not find any section for analyses on Short Stories.
Anyways, one of the courses I get is reading Literature and this week during the session we discussed the short story 'The Garden Party' by Katherine Mansfield. While discussing some of the questions we got during the lecture, we may have stumbled upon a rather... interesting discovery. I will explain all about it in my analysis. I wanted to post it somewhere so other people could look at it and tell me, first off, what you think about my analysis (is it well-written, what did I miss, what should I improve, grammar mistakes, etc.) and secondly, whether you agree with our interpretation.
Once again I hope I posted this in the correct section, and I hope you enjoy reading my first attempt at an analysis.
“He stepped out of the shadow.”
The Garden Party – An analysis
When reading the garden party, at first it may seem like a happy story about the good life and tea parties. However, there is much more to the story than just that. When you progress through the story you will find that it gets increasingly darker along the way, because what starts out as a simple garden party ends with a visit to a poor man who had died on that same day. The adjective ‘poor’ may seem useless here, but the short story The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield contains class differences as a major theme.
In the Sheridan family, nobody but Laura really seems to care about people below their class. The mother is in fact fairly intolerant towards lower class people, indicated by the fact that she referred to the dead man as a “drunken workman”. She also did not take the feelings of her poor neighbours into account, stating that she saw no reason why they should cancel their party.
But just as much as, if not more so than class, symbolism seems to be a big part of the story as well, depicted mostly by two things: Jose’s song and Laura’s hat. To start off, Jose’s song. She sings about an awakening, which is exactly what seems to be what Laura has at the end of the story. The ending is pretty open and is left open to interpretation, but what seems to be clear is that she has learned a lesson about life. Not only did this seem to be her first experience with death, she also interacted with her poor neighbours for the first time. It is no coincidence that Jose’s song was about an awakening, because not only does Laura have an awakening herself at the end of the story, visiting a man who has died is called a ‘wake’.
Secondly, Laura’s hat. Hats were commonly used for symbolism in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In this story it is no different. Laura receives a black hat with gold daisies from her mother, which she wears for the rest of the story. The daisies are the key here; symbolically speaking, they stand for innocence and gentleness, two characteristics that definitely describe Laura. They also depict naivety, and looking at Laura it can be argued that she is pretty naïve. She doesn’t always realise what is happening around her, and she has her first experience with death and lower classes in the story after always having been ‘trapped’ in her pretty much utopian house and family. The black colour of the hat can be seen as foreshadowing to her visiting the dead man’s house, as a black hat is usually worn at wakes. A little contrast that is worth noting in the story is the fact that the workman Laura was speaking with was described to wear a straw hat. This is compared to her hat a very simple and cheap hat, indicating that his class is lower than hers.
Now let’s take a look at a completely different aspect of the story, namely Laurie. He is introduced only after a little while into the story, and in my view he is the most intriguing character of all in this short story. He seems to be an inspiration to Laura, and is very much like her, too. But is he actually a real and alive person? From the way I interpret it, that remains questionable. He may in fact be merely a figure of Laura’s imagination. It’s like he is her, but only as a boy. As if he created her to be a brother she could talk with and have fun with. As can be seen in the story she does not seem to interact much with her sisters. Not to forget the fact that she grows up practically imprisoned in the house with nobody to talk to but her family who she doesn’t seem to be on the same page with. It may just be that she created Laurie as a way to escape that life.
Now to take a look at Laurie’s role in the story. His main role seems to be that he encourages Laurie, as seen in certain parts of the story such as this one:
"Ra-ther," said Laurie's warm, boyish voice, and he squeezed his sister too, and gave her a gentle push. "Dash off to the telephone, old girl."
Looking further, one may notice that Laurie only interacts with Laura in the story. At no point does Laurie speak or even seem to notice or be noticed by any other person. When we meet him in the story he is brushing his hat with father, but neither of them were speaking until Laura got in and she started talking to Laurie. What is more, just before that somebody calls her downstairs to get to the phone, and after that she speaks with Laurie. It could be argued that, if Laurie is just imaginary, how could he have called her downstairs, unless she had heard the phone herself already? The key here is that it is not specified just who called her downstairs:
"Laura, Laura, where are you? Telephone, Laura!" a voice cried from the house.
“A voice” indicates that anybody could have called her. Her father was present when she got downstairs, it may well have been him to call her down. We cannot be sure.
More symbolic evidence lies, once again, in the hat and the daisies. Not only does the daisy symbolise innocence and gentleness, there used to be a Victorian custom (which is still used), where a woman plucks the petals off of a daisy, determining whether a loved one would love her back or not. This may be a hint towards her love being lost, which could cause her to create Laurie to try and fill the void. What points towards Laura actually having lost a love is this particular line right before Jose was about to start singing her song:
“The piano burst out so passionately that Jose's face changed. She clasped her hands. She looked mournfully and enigmatically at her mother and Laura as they came in.”
Now why would she look ‘mournfully’ when Laura and her mother come in? Possibly because she thought that hearing the song she was going to sing would remind Laura of her lost love.
Thank you for your attention.
~ Evo
A little sidenote: at some point I claimed that hats were commonly used for symbolism in the nineteenth and twentieth century. This is something I heard in class and not something I have an actual source for. I tried looking it up but couldn't find anything on the matter, so sorry for that!
(Also I'll admit I wasn't too sure how to end it, I'm not very good with closing my work off)