Comparison Of Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party And James Joyce’s Araby

“Araby” by James Joyce and “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield both published in 20th century are very interesting stories bases on early teenage and adolescence. Araby is based on a young unnamed boy who is suffering from his adolescence and the garden party depicts the teenage life of Young girl “Laura”. These both characters are going through a process of life. It shows the development in two teenagers which could be related to Entertainment. The major theme of these two stories is “Love and reality” whereas Innocence is more beautiful than maturity. Maturity makes you know so much. But innocence knows nothing much about life. “Araby” and “The Garden Party both having a powerful image and situations of innocence and maturity which is expressed in the form of Class Distinction, expectation vs reality and social status. Most important the theme of these stories is “love and reality”. In the past decades love was real and it has some limitations, secrets and full of loyalty but in the 20th century love become more passionate, stubborn and more open to society as it seen more in teenagers. In “Araby” the unnamed boy falls in love with a girl lived in his neighborhood which was having no sense to him because he was in his teenage as Joyce states “Every morning I lay on the flour in the front parlor watching her door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out on the door step my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure always in my eye and when we came to the point at which our ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her”. It means he was totally blind in the love with her, he expected that the girl also loves him, but the reality is different. He was trying to see her every day in the morning, but the image of the girl curses him even from a noise of the street. The boy’s feelings about her were so puzzled because he thought he belonged to a medium class family so she will not accept him. In addition, in “The Garden Party” Laura is going through the process of growing in which she does not have any idea about this world because her family background belonged to an upper class. Her thinking about the lower- and middle-class people was not so good. Mood swings is the main part of the adolescence period, suddenly she changed her mind towards the workmen when she saw them as “His smile was so easy, so friendly, that Laura recovered.

What nice eyes he had, small but such a dark blue! And now she looked at the others, they were smiling to. ‘Cheer up, we won’t bite,’ their smiled seemed to say. How very nice workmen were! And what a beautiful morning!”. These quotes clearly show the expectations vs reality that due to the high-class Laura thinks these workers having no standards, no looks but when she met with them her imagination totally changed. They all were good nice-looking men. Then she had good feelings about them. Hence, these two teens were having no idea about the reality because they both are just experiencing the imaginations. Moreover, in the early decades the class system was more exist in people as compared to the modern era because at that time people were less educated, they did not know anything about the world. They just focus on their social status, if they were rich than they were trying to be rich and who was poor they did handwork to maintain a good status in the society. In the “Araby” there is a class difference in the unnamed boy and the girl, he belonged to a medium class and she was better than him. “I held a florin tightly in my hand as I strode down Buckingham Street towards the station. The sight of the streets thronged with buyers and glaring with gas recalled to me the purpose of my journey. I took my seat in a third-class carriage of a deserted train”. These quotes clearly gave us an idea of class distinction that boy had just had two-shilling piece for his shopping from bazaar which he took from his uncle at nighttime. It shows the family status of the boy, if he belonged to rich family than he could not wait for his uncle for the money. However, in “The Garden party” the setting of the story shows itself the class distinction that how the unbelievable appearance of the garden shows the upper class of the family of Laura. Here “Garden” itself is the symbol of rich and wealthy family. Furthermore, “Oh well! Laura ran for the basket. It was filled, it was heaped by her mother. ‘Take it yourself, darling,’ said she. Run down just as you are. No, wait, take the arum lilies too. People of that class are so impressed by arum lilies”. It shows the class distinction between the rich and poor. When Laura wants to give bucket of expensive flower on the death of man, but her mother told her to give food because she thinks lower class deserves this type of food. Well this type of behavior put bad impact on the teenager that how her mother wants to treat the lower-class family and she kept her status high as compared to them.

Moreover, this shows that Laura expectations about that family and after she realized the reality of this world that how different class people treat to each other for keeping their status low and high. Well, both stories are having some literary devices such as stream of consciousness in “The Garden party” when the mother of Laura gave her all the responsibilities to organize the party than she started thinking about the arrangements of the party again and again ending with the good thoughts towards the workmen. On the other hand, the Epiphany in “Araby” when the unnamed innocence boy went to Bazaar and he did not find for the girl than he realize that the love was meaningless, the girl even does not care about him. After the meeting of just couple of minutes with her he thoughts it’s a love. It shows the boy took one step forward from innocence to the maturity of his life. As above mentioned, all the themes such as class distinction, expectation vs reality and social class if we relate these to present than up to some extent all themes are still present in some areas of the world for instance India. Indians are always ready to show of their class and high standard to lower- or middle-class people. But most of the youngsters do not believe in class distinction in most the countries because now they all are well educated. They are treating equal. We can see they do believe in reality as compared to the expectation. Hence there is a huge change in the mindsets of the people of 20th century and the advanced generation of 21st century who do believe in themselves rather than others. In conclusion, both stories are well connected to each other. It shows us in old decades how people believed in class distinction and how the youth were double blind in their own path. They did not know what was wrong or right. Moreover, both shows us that what we are experiencing in our past or present (reality) is horrible than our expectations, sometimes we cannot achieve what we expected rather than what we have already in real. The epiphany is almost same in the both stories that both the youngsters realized about their responsibilities of life do not expect too much from our lives.