A Test Case: The Garden Party

What It Signifies
The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield signifies the class clashes that so often grip societies. The story speaks not only of the clashes, but of the almost inevitable inability to escape biases based on the class separations.

How It Signifies
The Sheridans live up on a large hill, while the story speaks of the lower classes living in cottages around the base of the hill. This suggests that the Sheridans, because of their class, are "above" all those around them on the social scale. Also, the family's position allows them to look down on everyone else, while others are forced to look up to them, the general mindset of the higher and lower classes, respectively.

Laura's hat seems quite an important aspect of the story to me. The author kept mentioning it time and again, so I can't help but feel that it carries significance. The hat is given to Laura as an appeasement, meant to distract her from the horrible accident and convince her to attend the party, stunning, as she usually would. She got numerous compliments on the hat, and it was said that she had "never [looked] so striking." It seems almost ironic to me that on the day she descends to the slums of lower society, that she would be more presentable than ever, that she would look her absolute best, in shimmering clothes and a brand new, stunning hat. It's almost as if she is unknowingly asserting her dominance over the lower class. As she views the body of the dead man, she decides that she has no real need to worry about having thrown a party, and she says nothing to the man but "forgive my hat." Is she apologizing for wearing such an extravagant hat so near such a grief-filled house? Or is it because she is wearing such a beautiful and expensive accessory near those who could never afford it? Is she saying she's sorry because she "knows" she's better than these people but she didn't mean to show it? I just wonder why these are the words she chooses to send the man off with, instead of just saying she is sorry about his accident, or that his family has to live alone.

Laura also seems a bit frightened by the cottages. They are described as "mean," and the house of the deceased as having a "dark knot of people" outside. The women who speak to Laura are described as "queer," "oily," and "sly." The words all seem pretty creepy to describe people and places with, and that can signify that Laura is wary of the place she is visiting.

Laura seems the most hopeful of the Sheridan family for escaping conventions. She feels something for the family of the poor carter, and feels that it would be most inappropriate to throw a party on the day of an accident of a man who lived so close to them. Her family, of course, disregards her instincts, almost to the point of taunting, and she compromises with herself to enjoy the party and remember the poor man later. This compromise, coupled with Laura's reasoning later as she visits the house of the deceased, show the difficulty of escaping from class expectations and regulations. She reasons with herself that neither the man's life nor death has anything to do with "garden-parties and baskets and lace frocks," and that she should no longer let his accident interfere with the life expected of her.