Episode 284: Best of – “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield (Ep. 13)

This week on The Literary Life, we bring you an episode from deep in the archives in which Cindy and Angelina discussed Katherine Mansfield’s short story “The Garden Party.” After a great chat over their commonplace quotes, Angelina and Cindy dig into this week’s story. They start with how Cindy found this story and the connections she was making to Little Women. Angelina gives a brief biographical sketch of Katherine Mansfield and highlights how Mansfield’s own illness and death give us insight into how she deals with death in this story. Angelina walks us through how she looks at the use of figurative language and images, such as the Garden of Eden. They also touch on “The Garden Party” having the same structure of moving toward a moment of epiphany that we saw in “Araby.”

Cindy brings up the disconnect between the world of the women at home and the working people outside the home, as well as between the classes in this story. They talk about the importance of Laura’s new hat as a symbol of one type of person she can become. Another image that Angelina and Cindy take a look at is the descent from the garden into darkness. They discuss the parallels from the beginning of the story and the end of the story, as well as Laura’s movement from innocence to experience, from blindness to sight.

Listen Now:

Commonplace Quotes:

On the day of judgment, surely we shall not be asked what we have read but what we have done, not how well we have spoken, but how well we have lived.
Thomas à Kempis, from Imitation of Christ

If we had foolish, unchristian hopes about human culture, they are now shattered. If we thought we were building a heaven on earth, if we looked for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned, and not a moment too soon.
C. S. Lewis, from The Weight of Glory

The Truly Great

by Stephen Spender

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious, is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

Books Mentioned:

Amazon Affiliate Links included below

Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis

The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis

How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster

Support the Literary Life:

You can find Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

You can find Cindy Rollins at MorningTimeforMoms.com, over on her podcast The New Mason Jar, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. You can also check out her Patreon for additional content.

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