The Garden Party Summary

Since Lynn was a busy town of commerce and trade, the middle-class inhabitants were wealthy. The status of Margery?s father, John, several times mayor of Lynn, helped to instill Margery with self-respect. She was very much influenced by the people of Lynn?s concern with status and wealth: ?She had a very great envy of her neighbors that they should be as well arrayed as she.? In her Book, she even goes so far as to say that her marriage to businessman John Kempe did no justice to her ?worthy kindred? and was a socially-imbalanced relationship, although they both belonged to the same social class. This haughtiness and sense of pride are distinguishing features of Margery throughout her life.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity”, these are the quotes of the famous German physicist Albert Einstein in relation to how the world has become overly reliant on technology. As a result, we have taken nature for granted while also ignoring the adverse effects of technology. The making of steam engine, the usage of fossil fuel and the creation of chlorofluorocarbon are all technologies which has benefited us greatly and are continuing to do so, but like everything on this earth there are always negatives to counter the positives This is the balance that we must find between nature and humans.

I’m not the Indian you had in mind; a video that was written and directed by Thomas King challenges the stereotypical image that America has towards Native Americans. King is also the author of a short novel “A seat in the Garden”. This short story also challenges the established perspective that American society has towards the Native Americans. There are various stereotypes and perspectives that a majority of the public has toward a particular group. For example some of the common stereo types that are seen throughout the media are that all Asians are good at math, women are primarily sex objects, All Africans like fried chicken, and all Mexicans are gangsters. These stereo types are not completely true for an entire group, yet they

Social status often establishes one 's credibility and integrity within a society. The power that social status has, encourages people to heavily focus on it. With this focus on social status ever pressing, one’s identity often gets intertwined with and reliant on their place in the hierarchy of society. People become fixated on one idea they have of a person in a certain social class, that anybody who breaks out of specific stereotypes may often cause anger amongst others. In the short story “Greenleaf” by Flannery O’Connor, the main character, Mrs. May, is obsessive about the way others perceive her and her place in society. Mr. May’s identity is so strictly tied to her desire to get to a higher social class and her notions how society

The two housewives have a passionate love for gardening and bestow their love and appreciation towards their gardens. In the twentieth century, gardening was advocated as beneficial to one’s life and family. In the New England Quarterly, the journal, “Gardening as ‘Women’s Culture’ in Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s Short Fiction,” states,“The time women spent in

A much closer reading of “The Lottery,” for example, reveals that the men and women of the village are anything but “neighborly.” When Mrs. Tessie Hutchinson, one of the town’s female residents, comes late to the assembly, she is, as expected, warmly greeted by one of her friends who are already at the square:

The women of the story are not treated with the respect, which reflects their social standings. The first image of the women that the reader gets is a typical housewife. They are imaged as “wearing faded house dresses and

While Beneatha is a confident and independent young woman, Laura is rather shy and timid. In seeing these different mindsets, one is able to more fully realize how Beneatha and Laura represent the mindsets that women might have had during the 1930s and 1950s. With the character of Laura being set in the Depression era, and the character of Beneatha being set in the Pre-Civil Rights era, it’s clearly shown that as time passed in American history, the number of motivations and desires of women increased, along with a newly found drive to be something more than a housewife. The overall timid nature of Laura as opposed to the determined and confident personality of Beneatha dramatically shows how over time the way women were motivated and thought in America changed dramatically from the early 1930s to the late

According to Elizabeth Lowell, “Some of us aren't meant to belong. Some of us have to turn the world upside down and shake the hell out of it until we make our own place in it.” Sometimes what every situation needs is an outsider to flip the script and create a new outlook on everything. In Shirley Jackson’s novel, “We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” the speaker, Merricat, is an outsider of society on many levels, such as mental health, gender, and that she is an upper class citizen in a poor area. Although Merricat is mentally unstable, her outsider’s perspective criticizes the social standard for women in the 1960s, indicating that social roles, marriage, and the patriarchy are not necessary aspects in life such as it is not necessary to have the same outlook on life as others.

Betty Keller wrote a short drama, Tea Party, to bring light to the subject of loneliness and isolation of the elderly. Tea Party is written in a point of view of the narrative voice, written in Hester and Alma’s perspectives, with the setting taking place in their house. These sisters are both realistic and stereotype characters because they seem like real people, but they are also the stereotype lonely elderly characters as well. Whenever people came to their house to provide them with a service, such as a newspaper boy or the meter man, the women organized a tea party to invite them in and share stories of their lives with their company. The sisters’ both are certain they are always right and the other sister is wrong. Keller uses the

       As the tale begins we immediately can sympathize with the repressive plight of the protagonist.  Her romantic imagination is obvious as she describes the "hereditary estate" (Gilman, Wallpaper 170) or the "haunted house" (170) as she would like it to be.  She tells us of her husband, John, who "scoffs" (170) at her romantic sentiments and is "practical to the extreme" (170).  However, in a time

Throughout the play, Heartbreak House, it is clearly evident that class distinction is inevitable within society. Characters, Mazzini Dunn, Ellie Dunn and the burglar, Billy Dunn, are great examples of how many people treat others from different social ranks. Mazzini Dunn and his daughter Ellie Dunn are of the lower working class. Mazzini has spent his life working for an upper class man, Mangdan, that he believes he owes his life to, for giving him employment. However, instead

No doubt, adults from middle-class love to take orders from a junior girl. Through her language, she feels comfortable to give demands directly to lower class people who are older than her and it seems like that is the only power Jose has. It later becomes clear she views the lower classes as lesser beings than her, as when she’s confronted by Laura about stopping the party she says “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. Don’t be so extravagant” (Mansfield 1309). Jose’s reaction would give reader a clear image that how upper class men treat upper class women as well. However, Laura does not. At the beginning, Laura tries to act and talk like her mother and sister would do, but in a polite way. After she notices that those people are nice to her, she changes the way she talks. Due to that, Laura is a very sensitive girl and kind girl who does not feel she is privileged than lower classes. In additional, that is probably why Laura is the only one who shows sympathy for the dead man.

Short stories often have various underlying themes and meanings to them and can often be compared to other stories to find those same meanings. Occasionally, you need to dig deeper to find these hidden meanings. The three short stories, A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield, and Everyday Use by Alice Walker all share some similar themes and ideas that require some digging to uncover and bring to the surface.

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.