Empathy, Understanding, and Class Consciousness Theme Analysis

Mansfield’s story is as much about class division as it is about characters’ awareness of that division. While “The Garden Party” demonstrates how elite prejudice against working-class people helps sustain an unequal society, it also shows how encounters across class lines can change (at least some) people’s social understanding. In other words, meeting people from other classes can help people develop a consciousness of class difference and, therefore, empathy for those of different classes. However, the story is not particularly optimistic: in it, Mansfield also shows how class prejudice can limit understanding even when the privileged are well-intentioned, and that their identification with and empathy for the disadvantaged are often insufficient to meaningfully affect the material conditions that structure class differences.

Mansfield emphasizes and parodies the sharp social divide between rich and poor by depicting the Sheridans’ often absurd prejudice against working-class people and their inability to imagine the perspective of lower-class people. After learning of the death of the cart-driver Mr. Scott, one of the Sheridan daughters, Jose, accuses Scott of being drunk during the accident. She suggests that he must be responsible for his own death and, therefore, that the Sheridans should not concern themselves with it. It is clear as Jose makes this argument that her primarily goal is to get to enjoy her family’s party, rather than have it stopped by the “inconvenience” of some poor person’s death. Mrs. Sheridan similarly argues that the Sheridans should not stop the party because “people like that don’t expect sacrifices from us.” In fact, she is “amused” when Laura suggests putting off the party out of concern for the Scotts. Mrs. Sheridan, like Jose, cares only about the garden party, not about Scott’s death. When Mr. Sheridan mentions the tragedy, she considers him “tactless” and complains that it “nearly ruined” the Sheridans’ plans.

The omniscient third-person narrator also reinforces the Sheridans’ prejudices, even as Laura begins to move past them. The narrative voice can be seen as carrying the force of social convention, butting in to remind the reader whenever anyone behaves “improperly.” When a deliveryman arrives with cream puffs from Godber’s, for example, the narrator is the one who explains their significance: “Godber’s were famous for their cream puffs. Nobody ever thought of making them at home.” When the cook offers some to Jose and Laura, the narrator interjects, “Oh, impossible. Fancy cream puffs so soon after breakfast. The very idea made one shudder.” Mansfield makes the Sheridans’ social codes explicit through the narrative voice, and these codes extend to the family’s views of the poor. It is the narrator who first condescendingly describes the cottages where the Scotts live, explaining that the structures sit “far too near” to the Sheridans’ house and are “the greatest possible eyesore” because they are “disgusting and sordid.” The narrator sides with the neighborhood and against the cottages on the grounds that the cottages “don’t fit” and are in fact intrusions on the neighborhood, which ought to stay wealthy. The Sheridans and the narrator alike take working-class residents as an unsightly imposition, feeling disgust rather than pity. The Sheridans—and society at large—ultimately do not see the poor as people. The omniscient narrator’s alignment with the Sheridans demonstrates just how powerful social conventions can be, particularly when it comes to blaming the poor for their own plight. The narrator also reflects Laura’s tacit understanding of the expectations and attitudes she wishes to escape, as well as the social forces that will align against her should she ever truly try to escape them.

However, unlike the rest of her family, over the course of the story and due in part to the jolt of Mr. Scott’s death, Laura begins to develop an awareness of her privilege and tries to consider the world from working-class characters’ perspectives. Her transformation starts when she watches four workmen put up the marquee.  She is struck by how directly and informally they speak, and when she sees one of the workmen bend down to smell a lavender plant, Laura starts to “wonder for him caring for things like that” and decides that “she would get on much better with men like these” than the “silly boys” of her own class background. Laura recognizes that wealthy New Zealanders keep things, like the garden, for show and not for experience; she appreciates the way that the workers seem to live in, experience, and enjoy the real world, rather than holding it as property for status’s stake. Laura laments the “absurd class distinctions” and “despises” the “stupid conventions” that block her from spending time with people like the workmen; despite recognizing the restrictions class divisions put on her, she paradoxically decides that “she didn’t feel them. Not a bit, not an atom…”

But the main development in Laura’s class consciousness is, of course, her response to Scott’s death: she insists that the Sheridans cancel the party to respect the Scott family’s mourning process. She recognizes the Scotts as “nearly neighbours,” which contrasts with the narrator’s suggestion that such a poor family is not welcome in the neighborhood at all. At the end of the story, when Laura visits the Scotts’ house, she again becomes caught between her actual class status and her sympathy for the less fortunate families that live down the hill. She is incredibly self-conscious about her trip, worrying that her expensive clothes betray her class status and hoping that she can leave as soon as possible because she believes her appearance might offend them. Like her realization that the workmen appreciate beauty, Laura’s realization that “garden-parties and baskets and lace frocks” could not possibly matter to the dead Mr. Scott demonstrates her understanding that certain human experiences transcend class lines. Death figures as a great equalizer, one that lets her imagine she is no longer bound by the frivolities of her class.

However, while Laura tries to identify with working-class people’s perspective, the story portrays her as ultimately unable to overcome the blinders of her class position. In part due to the workmen’s comfortingly informal speech, Laura literally does not understand them, even as she begins to identify with the working class: one of the workmen says that “you want to put it somewhere where it’ll give you a bang slap in the eye, if you follow me” and Laura thinks instead that the man is referring to the bangs in her hair. When they respond that she should choose a more “conspicuous” spot, she completely ignores their advice and suggests putting it in the corner of the tennis court, near the band. Laura stutters when interacting with the workmen and the Scotts—she literally cannot communicate with them, which suggests her inability to understand their experience. When she visits the Scotts’ house, Laura’s predominant feeling is guilt, not sympathy; she only felt the latter from the comfort of her home. Her ecstasy at seeing Scott’s body is only followed later by a recognition that, next to the deceased’s wife and sister-in-law, “all the same you had to cry,” and Laura nevertheless speaks out of guilt rather than empathy: “forgive my hat.”

And yet, in addition to failing to build a mutual understanding with the Scotts, the awareness that Laura does gain causes her to lose connection with her own family—she ends up caught in the middle, unable to communicate with either side. At the end of the story, Laura and her brother Laurie, who speaks with the caricatured formality of English gentry, have their own misunderstanding. Laura stutters here, too, asking “isn’t life—” and, before she can complete the idea, Laurie interjects “Isn’t it, darling?” Laurie believes he understands what Laura is thinking and preempts her words, but the implication that they are not actually thinking the same thing suggests a growing gulf between the two siblings. Laura believes she understands life for the Scotts but does not; Laurie believes he understands Laura’s epiphany but he also does not.