Characters In The Garden Party

Mansfield 's "The Garden Party," is almost loosely based on her own life seeing as she grew up in an upper middle class family. The Beauchamps (Mansfield 's surname) also had three daughters and a son. The main character of the Garden party (Laura Sheridan) is a satirization of Mansfield when she was a young adult. With these parodies we see many issues of class, gender, and the way a generation is raised in this story due to Manfield 's experiences. As a character, Laura Sheridan is your typical naive, pampered and privileged child you see in an upper middle class family and can also be said for the rest of her family. Laura, her sisters, and her mother are disrespectful to anyone who is of lower class, we see this throughout the text. The possible other reason for their disrespect is that Mansfield 's stories were written in a time where the options of women were very limited.

Independence and having a career was a rare thing for a woman to have during that time, so in a way the Sheridan women often had opportunities in exerting their class dominance so they can feel better about themselves, and what better way to do so in a

She requests that the party should be postponed, "we can 't possibly have a garden party with a man dead just outside the front gate." Her sister Jose greatly rejects this idea, "stop the garden party? My dear Laura, don 't be so absurd" (1303). This incident strongly proves that Laura is far more sensitive than her family members when showing sympathy for those who are lower. Children of the Sheridan family are also forbidden in setting foot on areas of the lower class people because of the "revolting language and of what they might catch." However, it is revealed that Laura and Laurie have prowled and walked through the area. "It was disgusting and sordid. They came out with a