The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield: Unspoken Emotions and Controversial Discussions

The Garden Parties and Other Stories is a short story collection written by Katherine Mansfield and published in 1922. Mansfield was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1888. During her life she lived in New Zealand, England and France. She died early, only 35 years old, suffering from tuberculosis. One of her friends, and another great author from that period, Virginia Woolf, said the following about her writing: "She was for ever pursued by her dying, and had to press on through stages that should have taken years in ten minutes . . . She had a quality I adored and needed; I think her sharpness and reality - her having knocked about with prostitutes and so on, whereas I had always been respectable - was the thing I wanted then. I dream of her often . . ."

 

Mansfield's writing is very similar to Woolf's. When reading the first short story, I immediately thought of Woolf, as I had already read a couple of her novels. The short story collection consists of 15 short stories (in the Penguin Classics version, other versions contain more): At the Bay, The Garden Party, The Daughters of the Late Colonel, Mr and Mrs Dove, The Young Girl, Life of Ma Parker, Marriage à la Mode, The Voyage, Miss Brill, Her First Ball, The Singing Lesson, The Stranger, Bank Holiday, An Ideal Family, and The Lady's Maid. The settings of the stories are New Zealand, England and the French Riviera.

 

The book has received a lot of praise for its use of narrative. If the short story is long (as some are: At the Bay, for instance, is 33 pages long!), the narrator is to a very large degree omniscient, meaning that we get to know what several people think and feel. In my opinion, this makes the stories more reflected and shows how there are multiple perspectives in a conflict.

 

The short stories are written in a simple language that is easy to understand. One is, however, required to read between the lines in all her stories; even though the narrator is omniscient, the characters' feelings are never clearly shown. One has to look at several actions made by the characters to understand how they feel.

 

The short story collection discusses various topics which were considered taboo at the time: homosexuality, racism, class struggle, sexism, etc. Another short story written by Mansfield, not included in this collection, Leves Amores (1907), received strong reactions due to the story being about two women going on a date. In The Garden Party and Other Stories injustice is shown by provocation through the characters' actions, which at our time would be seen as despicable. Displaying injustice in this manner shows the example of extreme cases, but they are nevertheless effective.

 

 

 

I am giving The Garden Party and Other Stories 5/5. I thought it was brilliant, and I loved every minute of reading it. I will definitely buy her other works and read them with pleasure.

 

- Charlie.