tinently, in the Lay of Guingamor of Marie de France the apple tee is the element of control between the lower and the upper world. Having rejected the love of his queen, Guingamor is sent on a perilous bear hunt. ‘He meets a beguiling fay who takes him to her castle and banishes for him all thought of time and of the world. After three hundred years she lets him return to earth on the condition that he taste no food there. He dis obeyed by taking three apples from a wild apple tree. Having casted the apples, he immediately becomes a shriveled old man, Fortunately, however, the fay forgives him and sends her messengers to bring him back across the wwater to fairy land. To Marian, too, the apple that she has hidden in the shrub is an element of control between two worlds. She is young and she has made no commitment t9 the Underworld. She therefore bites the apple in an eager and even a desperate affirmation of her belonging to the Upper World. And the rocketing bus reinforces the symbol of the life-force after the flight from the horrors of the land of the living dead. ‘Thus the story represents another visit to a strange and terrifying Land existing beyond a dark wood and across a dividing stream—a descent into the Underworld in parvo. It becomes not only the experience of a particular childhood so vividly realistic as to seem a pure transcript from life but also an experience of the race cast in the form of a new myth. Perhaps better than any other of Miss Welty’s stories, “A Visit of Charity” reveals the informing influence of myth subconsciously at work in the artist. LODWICK HARTLEY THE UNRESOLVED CONFLICT IN “THE GARDEN PARTY” ‘The most frequently anthologized of Katherine Mansfeld’s works, “The Garden Party,” has long enjoyed a reputation for near-perfection in the art of the short story. Its characters are deftly drawn with quick Chekhovian strokes: its action moves along at a vigorous pace; its central situation, richly textured, suggests both antecedence and aftermath; its dialogue, espe- ally the internal debate, is psychologically apt and convincing. And yet, for all its undeniable swrength and beauty, “The Garden Party” often leaves readers with a feeling of dissatisfaction, a vague sense that the story somehow does not realize its potential, The difficulty, I think, is a structurat one: the conflict has a dual nature, only part of which is resolved effectively. “The Garden Party” is a story conceming the most common form of character development, if not the easiest to portray: the process of growing up. Viewing the changing reaction of the protagonist to an incident that dhreatens to upset an upperclass social occasion, one is aware that throughout the whole story there is 2 groping toward maturity, and that at the end ‘Laura is indeed more mature than she is at the opening. The incident ix 354 MODERN FICTION STUDIES Copyright (2) 2003 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (¢) Johns Hopkins Unlversity Press