Plot Summary Of The Garden Party By Katherine Mansfield
This story is about Laura, a wealthy, spoiled, and artistic teenager who has never had real contact or interactions with the less privileged or lower-class people. Although Laura has a look into the world around her, including meeting those who work for her family and even seeing a death, she is still naïve toward people she considers lower-class.
On a warm beautiful summer morning, Laura meets the less privileged through the garden party thrown at her house. Some workmen are present to put things together for the party and Laura is designated by her mother to oversee and supervise the workers. The gardeners are working on setting the marquee in a suitable place as a major centerpiece for the party. Laura has a great impression of the workmen and she is really impressed by the men’s looks, and her immediate assessment is that they were amiable and friendly. “How very nice workmen are”. She is greatly moved by one of the men who instinctively reaches out to smell a lavender flower at the garden. According to the narrator, Laura deems that singular act to mean that all workmen are good and lovely people. She then begins to make comparisons between men in her own social class and the lower-class workmen; she feels that they had more value than “The silly boys she danced with and who came to Sunday night supper”. Through her brief meeting and interaction with the workmen, she believes she can readily identify with and be a part of their class even though she has no inkling about the life of a common man and how difficult it is for them to do basic things like providing for their family.
Laura realizes that she cannot identify with the lower-class people. Laura’s happiness comes to a halt when she learns about the death of their neighbor who left behind a wife and five small kids. Because of her empathy, she feels it would be outrageous for them to still carry on with the garden party given the fact that their neighbor has suffered a tragedy. She cannot fathom that they have to carry on with their merrymaking while this other family suffers so much sorrow and pain. In an effort to stop the party, Laura decides to reason with her mother as to why the party must not go on, but to her astonishment, her mother makes light of the issue. The next turn of events shows how Laura’s disconnection from what real life is as she becomes easily swayed and pacified by her mother who offered her a beautiful hat in order to make her change her stance on the issue of social class distinction and inequality. She also chooses to believe her mother view and assessment of the poor family “I can’t understand how they keep alive in those poky little houses”.
Furthermore, on her way to the house of the diseased man, she is afraid as she journeyed into a world that is totally different from hers; her gesture of bringing them a food basket becomes a regret for her as she is being faced with the reality of how life really is for the poor and down trodden in the society. She feels out of place and immediately misses her life of luxury and class. “Ah, what happiness it is to be with people who all are happy, to press hands, press cheeks, smile into eyes”.
At the climax of the story, Laura cannot grasp the true meaning and significance of death. When she sees the dead body of the man, she is not scared because she sees the man as merely sleeping and said that the man was in a peaceful place void of sadness, pain or sorrow. Her reaction to death validates that she did not have any form of exposure to the world around her and how the world works due to her sheltered lifestyle. Laura’s first reaction to the tragic death of the impoverished man is an absolute diversion from reality, she compares the state the dead man was in to the kind of happiness her rich family derived from throwing lavish parties. She refers to the dead man as “wonderful, beautiful, and that the experience was simply marvelous”. She does not understand what the situation means for the wife and the family he left behind. Even after having an exposure into the everyday life of an average workman, Laura has not really learnt anything about the reality of the life of the low- class people, the suffering they face in comparison to the life of the upper class. As she leaves the village of the workmen, she still cannot express in vivid terms what life is. “Isn’t life – But what life was she couldn’t explain”.
