The Garden Party

Katherine Mansfield’s “The Garden Party” was published in her 1922 short story collection The Garden Party and Other Stories, and many critics consider it the best example of her renowned prose style. Like many Modernists, Mansfield was most interested in rendering not objective realities but characters’ subjective perspectives; her third-person narrators often have intimate insight into a character’s interior world, to the extent that the narrative voice embodies elements of that character’s psychology. The world of “The Garden Party” is therefore rendered with a fanciful sensitivity that seamlessly empathizes with its young protagonist. This study guide cites this online version from the Katherine Mansfield Society.

The story is told from a third-person perspective; however, the narrator has particular insight into the thinking of the protagonist, Laura.

The story starts with a pleasant and positive tone as the reader learns that the Sheridan family will hold their annual garden party later that day. The mother (Mrs. Sheridan) says that the children, rather than the adults, will host the garden party this year; as the first workmen arrive at the house to begin the preparations, the children decide amongst themselves that Laura, “the artistic one” (1), will direct the workmen.