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shamelessly padding my reading goal with ap lit reading ( )

A coming of age story that tells about a society with a rigid class structure without describing anything except a young woman's afternoon. And a book full of other interesting stories. ( )

This is Mansfield’s most well-known story; I’d heard of it, of course, but had not previously read it.

The wealthy Sheridan family are holding a garden party today. The mother has left it up to her three daughters, Meg, Laura and Jose, to arrange everything.

Laur goes to supervise where the marquee is to be placed, but it turns out that the four men who come with it themselves know best where it should stand.

(This is the first instance of a comparison between the upper class and the working class, and here it is shown that the working class knows best.)

Though the men are workmen, Laura feels that they are very nice, “easy” and friendly.

One of the men, who is tall with nice eyes, pinches a sprig of lavender and snuffs up the scent. Laura realizes that even a workman can appreciate the scent of lavender. She thinks workmen seem so much better than the “silly boys” she dances with, and who come to supper.

She thinks that class distinctions are absurd, “She felt just like a work-girl.”

Cook has made fifteen kinds of sandwiches for the guests.

Golber’s man tells them that there has been a horrible accident and a man was killed. He was a carter called Scott who had lived in one of the little cottages just below. He left a wife and five little children.

Laura is horrified and feels they must stop the party, because how can they hold a big party when a neighbour has been killed.

Actually, the houses “had no right to be in that neighbourhood at all”. They were “little mean dwellings”. “The very smoke coming out of their chimneys was poverty-stricken.”

When the Sheridan children were small, they were forbidden to set foot there because of the “revolting language” used and of what they might catch.

But Jose says of course they can’t stop the party.

Mother is just relieved the man wasn’t killed in their garden. She says it’s only by accident they heard of the death, and by the way she couldn’t understand how they kept alive in “those poky little holes”.

Laura feels it is heartless of them, because how would the band sound to the poor wife?

Mother says “People like that don’t expect sacrifices from us”.

People begin to arrive and the bank strikes up. “Ah, what happiness it is to be with people who all are happy.”

When it is all over, they still have lots of sandwiches and cakes left over, all going to be wasted.

Mrs Sheridan gets the idea of putting all the food into a basket and taking it to the bereaved womn and her children.

Mrs Sheridan says Laura also should take the lilies she had ordered for the party since “people of that class” are so impressed by arum lilies.”

Laura departs with the basket to the little cottages; all that is in her head are the “kisses, voices, laughter”and so on from the party. “She had no room for anything else.” The party has been most successful.

What she is going to is quite opposite from the party. The lane is smoky and dark.

She arrives at the house. “A dark knot of people stood outside.”

A little woman in black asks her to step in.

She is in a “wretched little” kitchen. The wife is sitting by the fire with a puffed up face, swollen eyes and swollen lips.

Laura just wants to get out, but by chance ends in the bedroom where the deceased man is lying.

He is a young man, “sleeping … soundly... so remote, so peaceful”.

”He was wonderful, beautiful.”

While they were laughing and the band was playing, “this marvel had come to the lane. “Happy ... Happy … All is well, said that sleeping face. … I am content.

So both the Sheridan family and the party guests and the de)ad man are happy, happy.

It seems like Mansfield is saying ”Death is ok, it is peaceful.”

(It may be of significance that Mansfield was seriously ill when she wrote the story and dies two years later.)

Laura gets out of the house, “past … those dark people”.

Her brother Laurie comes to meet her. She is crying. He asks if it was awful. She says no, “it was simply marvellous”.

She tries to ask Laurie “Isn’t life” “isn’t life” but can’t explain what she means.

Does she mean “”contradictory”, “enigmatic” or “wonderful”? Or what?

She was expecting a negative experience, but to see the dead man was marvellous.

The story deals with class differences, and the mother, Mrs Sheridan’s, constant awareness of these.

I don’t quite understand the scene where Laura sees the peaceful, happy, dead man or why Mansfield uses the term “marvel”.

But at the end it seems that the two classes are reconciled.

Laura’s experience of seeing the dead man , which she terms as being marvellous, seems to be more a spiritual experience than anything else.

Mansfield herself must have had a similar experience. ( )

I am so happy that I discovered Katherine Mansfield as a writer because I adore the stories in this volume. They have so much real feeling, they are so true to life and character, and I was drawn into most of them with such force. The majority are somewhat sad and deal with insecurities, loss, hope and flawed dynamics between family members or couples - but always with such subtlety and from a cautious and nuanced point of view.
Another aspect I liked is that it is evident that Mansfield experimented with different structures and forms, so the writing is more varied. This is most striking in the last story in the collection, "The Lady's Maid", which is told from the point of view of a maid who talks to a visitor - it is a dialogue, but the questions and answers of the visitor are left blank, so that the text reads almost like an inner monologue.
Of course there are a few stories that I liked less than others, but most of them are short masterpieces, and I felt like discovering one gem after the other, admiring Mansfield's observation, her ability to characterize so unobtrusively, yet so on point.
The stories that are most remarkable to me are: "Marriage à la Mode", "The Voyage", "Her First Ball", "The Stranger" and "An Ideal Family". ( )