The Garden Party: analyse af social klasse og identitet

Why does social class matter in difficult situations? When you belong to a social class, people often have an image of how you live your life, under which circumstances you live it, and that some social classes are better than others. This is the focus of the short story “The garden party” (Mansfield, 1921) .Furthermore it shows us that not everyone cares about which social class you belong to.

“The garden party” is as the title says about a garden party. Laura, which is the main character in the short story, her mother Mrs. Sheridan is throwing a huge garden party. In the middle of the preparations, some terrible news is given. A man living not far away has died in a terrible accident. When Laura hears about it, she is horrified. She grabs her sister Jose “However are we going to stop everything?” (Mansfield, 1921, s. P. 6 L. 36). To Laurens surprise Jose seems unsympathetic, she believes that Laura is being silly “Stop the garden party? My dear Laura don’t be so absurd. Of course, we can’t do anything of the kind. Nobody expects us to” (Mansfield, 1921, s. P. 7 L. 3-4). Uncomprehending to what Jose had said, she went to her mother hoping that she will cancel the party. But her mother is just like Jose “People like that don’t expect sacrifices from us” (Mansfield, 1921, s. P. 8 L. 18). Laura does not agree with her mother but then she sees her own reflection “…charming girl in the mirror, in her black hat trimmed with gold daisies, and a long black velvet ribbon” (Mansfield, 1921, s. P. 8 L. 22-23) and suddenly she does not feel so terrible about the accident “… it all seemed blurred, unreal, like a picture in the newspaper. I’ll remember it again after the party’s over she decided” (Mansfield, 1921, s. P. 8 L. 27-29). Then her brother Laurie arrived and when she saw him, she remembered about the accident and wanted to tell him. His opinion matters very much to Laura “If Laurie agreed with the others, then it was bound to be all right” (Mansfield, 1921, s. P. 8 L. 35). He compliments her hat, and she ends up not telling him. The garden party started, and it was a huge success. Mrs. Sheridan decides that; they are to make a basket with leftovers for the dead man’s family. Laura makes her way down to the cottages. She is very scared, and all she wants is to go home, but she doesn’t. She delivers the basket and ends up seeing the dead man lying in his bed.