Katherine mansfield the garden party

The day, the lawns, and the gardens—particularly the roses—are perfect. Sheridan asks her youngest daughter, Laura, to go outside and give directions to the men who will erect a canvas shelter for a garden party. One of the men bluntly questions the location that Laura suggests for the marquee.

They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden-party if they had ordered it. Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud.

Short Story Analysis: The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield - The Sitting Bee

Only the blue was veiled with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimes in early summer. The gardener had been up since dawn, mowing the lawns and sweeping them, until the grass and the dark flat rosettes where the daisy plants had been seemed to shine.

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.

Breakfast was not yet over before the men came to put up the marquee.

At a Glance

I'm determined to leave everything to you children this year. Forget I am your mother. Treat me as an honoured guest. She had washed her hair before breakfast, and she sat drinking her coffee in a green turban, with a dark wet curl stamped on each cheek.

Jose, the butterfly, always came down in a silk petticoat and a kimono jacket. It's so delicious to have an excuse for eating out of doors, and besides, she loved having to arrange things; she always felt she could do it so much better than anybody else.

Four men in their shirt-sleeves stood grouped together on the garden path. They carried staves covered with rolls of canvas, and they had big tool-bags slung on their backs. Laura wished now that she had not got the bread-and-butter, but there was nowhere to put it, and she couldn't possibly throw it away.

She blushed and tried to look severe and even a little bit short-sighted as she came up to them. But that sounded so fearfully affected that she was ashamed, and stammered like a little girl, "Oh - er - have you come - is it about the marquee? What nice eyes he had, small, but such a dark blue!

And now she looked at the others, they were smiling too. How very nice workmen were!

And what a beautiful morning! She mustn't mention the morning; she must be business-like. They turned, they stared in the direction.

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A little fat chap thrust out his under-lip, and the tall fellow frowned.The Garden Party is a short story by the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield.

It was first published in in the “Westminster Gazette” in three parts. Katherine Mansfield is known mostly for her short stories, many of which are quite astute/5. Full online text of The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield.

Other short stories by Katherine Mansfield also available along with many others by classic and contemporary authors. short stories interactive word games. Katherine Mansfield. The Garden Party.

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And after all the weather was ideal. They could not have had a more perfect day for a.

"'The Garden Party" is a short story by Katherine Mansfield. It was first published (as "The Garden-Party") in three parts in the Saturday Westminster Gazette on 4 and 11 February , and the Weekly Westminster Gazette on 18 February It later appeared in The Garden Party: and Other Stories.

They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden-party if they had ordered it. Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud. Only the blue was veiled with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimes in early summer. The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield Written during the final stages of her illness, The Garden Party and Other Stories is full of a sense of urgency and was Katherine Mansfield's last collection to be published during her lifetime/5(9).

‘The Garden Party’ () is probably Katherine Mansfield‘s best-known and best-loved story. She never wrote a full-length novel, but – taking her cue from such innovators as Anton Chekhov – made the short story form her own.