Read the story:
The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield
“As for the roses, you could not help feeling they understood that roses are the only flowers that impress people at garden-parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing. Hundreds, yes, literally hundreds, had come out in a single night; the green bushes bowed down as though they had been visited by archangels.” Discuss the imagery used in this passage from Katherine Mansfield’s.
Commentary
In the realm of botany, roses are symbolic of beauty and resilience as they are also regarded as being indispensable in any upper-class garden. In context, readers can comprehend the pivotal significance of such bush flowers in their ability to be admired as in a status quo symbolism. In Mansfield’s short story, set in New Zealand in early modernist era, the garden and roses are considered as visual images of prosperity and higher social classification standards. Interchangeably, they lead to drawing to the conclusion that stratification is also existent and pervasive in both gardens and societies. The ‘…green bushes…’ far less presentable, and inarguably of lower providence and value, give rise to the marvel of roses, which may have even been created by ‘…archangels…’. Laura’s character is in a self-realised process of understanding the overall functions in society. From a quasi-ignorant and innocent existence, she steps on a self-fulfilling purpose of maturation and adulthood approximation, especially after viewing the sight of the dead man and the procedure in the derelict community. In need of doing justice and being true to her ethics, she collides to the pregiven systemic world from which she comes. The Sheridan family is completely detached to the poor community’s predicaments. It is an upper-class family, whose intentions are of enjoying their garden party that they throw annually, and has not got any concerns about someone else’s death, out of their class and family. The only provision they make is to hand out some food scraps. The Sheridan family pays no respect to the same people who have helped them build the garden party with their hard work. In all actuality, there would not have been a party, had it not been for constructors and servants. Class inequality is an ever-present theme in the short story. Also, Laura’s empathy towards the sufferings in the poor community and her desire for independent worldview formation are relevant in the thematic analysis of the short story.
