Analysis Of Katherine Mansfield 's ' The Garden Party ' Essay

The short stories, “Turned”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Good Corn”, by H.E Bates provide strong examples of how the representation of characters influence’s the reader’s perception of a text. Both stories depict similar characters: a middle-aged, childless wife, her husband and an 18-year old girl who works for them. They are both about a similar situation: man cheats on wife with girl and girl falls pregnant. However, the author’s of the text are from very different backgrounds and this is reflected in their stories. Although there are many similarities between “The Good Corn” and “Turned”, the values reflected in these stories, their resolutions and the reader’s perception of them are vastly different due to the contexts of

Moral and social beliefs were being challenged and the youth of America, while coming of age, were rebelling against their parent’s ideals and creating their own culture. The birth of a social movement was upon the world and issues such as sexual freedom, feminism and other civil rights were hot topics during the years prior to Oates writing this story. It is these social changes and society’s interest in them that creates the foundation for the setting that breathes life into this story. Without this foundation, the coming-of-age story of Connie, not to mention American society, and her journey from the innocence of the 1950s into the bitter reality of the turbulent times of the 1960s would have been lost.

Literary elements take up substantial fragments in stories today. In the novel “To Kill A Mockingbird”, there is a young boy named Jem Finch and throughout the story, you start to realise that he’s growing up, not physically, but mentally, we call that ‘the coming of age’. Jem’s coming of age experience is developed at Mrs.Dubose’s (a bad tempered old lady) house through conflict, irony, and symbol.

This story is a glimpse of the behavior and conditions of the youth of the time as represented by Connie in the story. Though Connie is represented as somewhat naïve and vain, the story’s treatment of her is mainly sympathetic. She is obsessed with her own beauty, spends her time mulling over “trashy daydreams” in her head and flirting young men. Yet Oates recognizes and sympathizes with Connie’s excitement over her growing freedom and entry into adulthood.

Coming of age stories are defined as stories where a vital character goes through a significant maturation process. Both “Jane Eyre” and “a portrait of the artist as a young man” match this description. The respective main characters, Jane Eyre and Stephen Dedalus both undergo a series of maturation changes as they venture into adulthood and all that it entails. Although Jane and Stephen are very different in terms of their lifestyle preferences, beliefs, customs and manners, many similarities can be drawn from the two concerning the hardships and adversities they are faced with as they grow up.

Women of the 1920’s compared to women today are seen as very passive and were usually domestic wives whose main responsibility was to take care of the house and children. But throughout this decade, women were starting to slowly modernize and become more independent. In The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, Lady Brett Ashley is somewhat portrayed as “the admirable new woman” of the 1920’s-the woman who openly flaunts accepted conventions of the passive, dependent female role in society and emerges as a positive, inspiring, and risk-taking figure in Paris, Pamplona, and Madrid among the male expatriate artists. In the novel, we see Brett as a modern and somewhat inspiring woman through characterization and the analysis of specific moments

In “Miss Brill,” Katherine Mansfield utilizes Miss Brill’s thoughts and actions and the surroundings to characterize Miss Brill as a lonely character. Mansfield immediately introduces Miss Brill with a very odd scene that shows her conversation with the fur coat. This quickly and effectively establishes the type of person Miss Brill is. As a result, Mansfield suggests that Miss Brill is a lonely and an “abnormal” person to illustrate to the audience how society treats those who are not considered “normal” through the later actions of a young couple.

Literary Analysis: The Dinner Party In “The Dinner Party” a story written by Mona Gardner tells about a certain gathering held in India when it was a British colony. A colonial official and his wife are having a dinner party, inviting army officers and government attaches and their wives along with a visiting American naturalist. (Gardner 1)

After I read the short story, I read and analyzed the questions. When I first read the story, I thought Mansfield was trying to say how life and death are both beautiful concepts. The gift of life is very underrated and isn’t praised as much as it should be, in my opinion. My results to the questions were acceptable but I didn’t realize how much I had missed. I understood how Laura accepted her own place in the higher class and others in the lower class. In Foster’s essay, where he compared Laura to Persephone really helped me because he really corresponding everything. It was very helpful at uncovering minor details that you would normally see as unnecessary to be very important.

The narrator in the story “Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield, is telling us this story in the third person singular perspective. Our narrator is a non-participant and we learn no details about this person, from a physical sense. Nothing to tell us whether it is a friend of Miss Brill, a relative, or just someone watching. Katherine Mansfield’s Miss Brill comes alive from the descriptions we get from this anonymous person. The narrator uses limited omniscience while telling us about this beautiful Sunday afternoon. By this I mean the narrator has a great insight into Miss Brill’s perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and into her world as a whole, but no real insight into any of the other characters in this story. By using this point of view,

Miss Brill is a single woman, probably in her mid to late fifties. She lives alone in a very small space without even a cat or bird. She has a collection of vintage clothing. Her physical appearance is only alluded to in the 18-paragraph short story by Mansfield, but in reading about a day in her life, one has the impression of an intelligent, sensitive

Mansfield created the story with the intention of allowing it to be open for various interpretations; though she includes specific detail concerning the characters Mansfield does not elucidate them in a manner that clearly defines their personalities. The story, like the budding rose, is one that never peaks to maturity, but rather remains in the developing stage because of its ambiguities which cause it to be discussed and interpreted in many varying ways.

Katherine Mansfield’s short story, Miss Brill, is a well-written story of an elderly, unmarried woman in Europe. In Miss Brill, Katherine Mansfield uses stream-of-consciousness point of view to show alienation and loneliness, appearances and reality, and Miss Brill’s perceptions as she attempts to make herself fit in with the park goers. Miss Brill is an older lady who makes a living teaching English to school children and reading newspapers to an “old invalid gentleman” (Wilson 2: 139). Her joy in life comes in her visits to the park on Sunday where she is notorious for “sitting in on other people’s lives” (Wilson 2: 140). It is there that her ritualistic, monotonous journey that Miss Brill refers to as a “play” takes place.

Women in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s had specific roles determined by the males who were dominant in their society. Women began to write stories which told their gender roles in that era. The authors of these stories lived in this time period and their stories reflect a lot of the traditional roles that were expected of them. The author’s purposes, were to tell about how marriage imprisoned women in this period of time. Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s stories provide examples of the gender roles. Their reasoning of writing these stories was to call on women of this era to learn how to empower themselves in this society.

Katherine Mansfield was born October 14, 1888 in Wellington New Zealand. Mansfield was a well-known and respected prominent writer in the 20th century. She attended Queens College in London with her sisters. Mansfield broke barriers for female writers in the early 20th century and even still today. Her stories commonly focus on the theme of reality /world versus human nature while also touching the themes of the darker and more complex sides of life.