Katherine Mansfield Garden Party and Other Stories

Elika Komrkov
Katherine Mansfield was born on 14th October 1888 in Wellington, New Zealand.
Katherine and her two sisters were sent to Queen College in London in 1903 to finish their
education. Here Katherine continued in contributing to literary life at the school just as she
had done at her previous schools in New Zealand. While studying she visited Europe and met
her soon to be life-long friend Ida Baker.
After Katherine and her two sisters finished their education in London, they returned
to New Zealand in 1906. Here Katherine spent her time writing, but she found Wellington
incredibly boring and asked her father to allow her to return to London.
The first year she spent again in Europe she published very little, only one poem and
one story. She got pregnant with the son of her musical teacher and married another man, who
was many years her senior. She left him almost immediately and her mother took her to
Bavaria for treatment. Because of this she was never able to have children afterwards.
After she returned to London she met John Middleton Murry, who was an editor and
scholar. She got married to him after several years of having a relationship. They moved many
times and at Mylor she met various artists and writers of the time, such as G. B. Shaw,
Bertrand Russell, the Huxleys and Dora Carrington. In 1916 Katherine was introduced to
Virginia Woolf, who didnt seem to like her and she was in a way jealous of Katherines
writing.
In October 1920 Mansfield had been diagnosed with tuberculosis and advised to go to
sanatorium, which she refused. She considered being in a sanatorium as living death.
According to her it would have been like giving up on the chance that se might recover.
In October 1922 she entered Gurdjieffs Institute for the Harmonious Development of
Man at Avon near Fontainebleau, where she sought physical cure and spiritual enlightenment
to help her to recover. She died of haemorrhage on 9th January 1923.
She is well known as a short story writer. At the Queens College in London she
started writing her first and only novel Julie which she never finished. She considered herself
unable to write a novel.

She had her works published in Australia in t Native Companion. After that she moved
to London. Here she was writing for the New Age magazine. In 1911 her first book of short
stories In the German Pension was published. But she never allowed for it to be republished,
because she considered it too immature and not good enough.
She worked on The Aloe, which she renamed Prelude and it was published at Virginia
Woolfs Hogarth Press.
Her second book of short stories Bliss and Other Stories was published in 1918.
But her best book of short stories is The Garden Party and Other Stories, which is also
her last. This book was published in 1922, not very long before her death.
The Garden Party and Other Stories contains fifteen short stories of which The
Daughters of the Late Colonel and Miss Brill are considered to be the best stories she had ever
written.
The Daughters of the Late Colonel is a short story consisting of twelve chapters and it
tells a story about two sisters and how they live after the death of their father. Reader can be at
first confused of the age of the two sisters, maybe even thinking them to be young. But they
already have a grown up nephew. Their age and appearance are not told in the story; the
reader is left to guess those.
The sister Constance, lovingly called by her sister Con, is the younger of the two and
Josephine, called Jug is the older one. After the death of their mother they have spent their
lives taking care of their father and that left them unmarried.
At first they often keep doing things the way they had done them while their father had
still been alive. They have to keep reminding themselves of the fact their father is no longer of
the living. Sometimes they think they might hear him berating them for the expenses of his
funeral and how he will react even at his funeral.
Afterwards when they decide that his room has to be cleaned out, they get startled
quite easily. His room looks like it was frozen over with all the furniture being white and they
are afraid of what might happen and how their father will haunt them for doing that. They
lock the room and leave it at that.

The short story ends with both sisters deciding on what to do with the maid who they
believe to be snooping through their things and spying on them altogether.
The ambiguity of the age and appearance of the two sisters leaves the readers
imagination to do the work itself. The story is also filled with flashbacks that are not made
different by using italics or pointing it out to readers.
Miss Brill, the other short story that is considered to be Mansfield best work, is of the
shorter type. It tells of a woman who goes every Sunday to a park to listen to live music and
to watch other people as they enjoy the day. She has put on a fur, which later becomes the aim
of laughter of two young people who were sitting next to her. She considers what is happening
around her as a play and herself as one of the actors, because she is a part of it every single
Sunday.
Again the reader may think that Miss Brill is a young woman, but that is not the case.
At the end of the story the boy exclaims: Because of that stupid old thing at the end there?
[...] Why does she come here at all who wants her? Why doesn't she keep her silly old mug
at home?
It seems that Miss Brill has had this every Sunday routine for ages now and maybe in a
way forgot to live her life to the fullest. She also spends her time reading newspaper to her
neigbour who she says is so silent he may even be dead and she wouldnt notice.
All the stories in The Garden Party and Other Stories are set in New Zealand. The
country is in a way idolized by the author who had left the country at the beginning of her
carreer. Her memories of the place are idolized and all the bore of Wellington is forgotten.
The english of New Zealand can only be noticed when the people are talking,
otherwise it could be considere the British RP English.
The edition which I read had the English or english of the beginning of the 20th
century and it was not rewritten to modern English as some publishers are wont to do. Thus
the language helps the reader to better familiarize with the time at which it was written and
first published.

1. Mansfield, Katherine. The Garden Party and Other Stories. Project Guttenberg. 2008.
2. http://www.katherinemansfield.com/mansfield/default.asp
3. http://www.katherinemansfield.net/life/briefbio1.html