Death

Katherine Mansfield explores profoundly the world of death and its impact on a person in her short story, "The Garden Party."

Enter the Sheridans, a wealthy, high-class family who live in England. They are your everyday rich snobs who think themselves better than the common person. There is, however, one person who is quite unlike her family, and that is Laura Sheridan.

Laura started off in a bubble, and has lived in it all her life. She has been protected from the real world, so she has never experienced the effects of betrayal, poverty, or labor, let alone death, which she does get to experience, by the end of the story. Laura meets face to face with death, and the results of it will change her look on life forever. It is a wonder she ever had a chance to be a caring, sensitive person with a sibling like Jose. Jose is an unfeeling, heartless and self-absorbed person who is completely clueless to those around her who don't have lots of money or expensive assets. She sings songs with mock passion:

This life is wee-ary

A Tear - a sigh

A Love that Chan-ges

This Life is wee-ary

A Tear - a sigh

A Love that chan-ges

And then...good bye!

This is the song that Jose sings before the garden party is held. It's ironic how she can sing a song about life being weary, a tear-a sigh when she cannot-could not, even remotely relate to ever being in the position of being weary. She is singing about something that she doesn't understand, something she can't feel. She can't sing it with any real compassion, because she has none. This shows when she breaks into a brilliant smile at the end of the song, which is supposed to be full of sadness. This is what gives the effect of irony. In truth, if anyone were to be singing this song, it should have been the man who was killed.

...Hope comes to die

A dream - a Wa-kening...

This part of the song is so foreshadowing that it is impossible to miss the second time through. After reading the story, one notices that Laura described the dead man as giving into his dream. And who is awakened, but Laura Sheridan, after seeing the man lying on the sofa. This song portrays everything that is to happen in the latter part of "The Garden Party." Mansfield writes, "He was far from all those things. He was wonderful, beautiful. While they were laughing, and while the band was playing, this marvel had come to the lane." These are Laura's thoughts in the scene where she is looking at the corpse. To one's surprise, she feels no pang of guilt or anything like it. She is taken aback by the beauty of this man. She realizes that he is beyond her, passed all the lace frocks, fancy hats and garden parties. Where he has gone, none of these superficial things matter. To Laura, this is something beautiful, something

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