Character Analysis: The Garden Party

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Part Ⅲ Close reading- tension in scenes

Mansfield did a great job in describing scenes. For example, natural scenes or objects inside. In The garden party, she were keen on endowing deep and meaning in things they seem. You may suddenly surprise by the beautiful scene Mansfield described, because you may see something different far behind. In her words, she was used to use symbol, impressionism and irony technique to express the world. In this part, the tension in scenes is discussed, which focus on three symbolic images, garden, lilies and Laura’s hat and the tension in Objective images and subjective feelings.
3.1 Symbolic images
A symbolic image is a concrete image that signifies a particular concept besides an object or an event or an …show more content…

They are mentioned in the stories for several times. The canna lilies may be impressed the readers deeply. “There, just inside the door, stood a wide, shallow tray full of pots of lilies. No other kind. Nothing but lilies---canna lilies, big pink flowers, wide open, radiant, almost frightening alive on bright crimson stems.” Canna lilies is a symbol of wealthy people like Laura’s whole family which from middle class enjoying party every day. While the arum lilies symbolize poor people like the carter. When Laura sees canna lilies ordered by her mother, “She crouched down as if to warm herself at that blaze of lilies; she felt they were in her finger, on her lips, growing in her breast.” The flowers swallow Laura and make her has a strange feeling. Her strange feeling is a symbol of the fact that the artificial world is an inseparate part of her. Lilies are mentioned again. When Mrs. Sheridan sends Laura to send leftovers of their party to the widow, she asks Laura to take the lilies together to “that poor creature” too. It is mentioned that the arum lilies symbolize poor people. Mrs. Sheridan considers arum lilies are inferior to canna lilies and they are suitable for those poor …show more content…

Only the blue was veiled with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimes in early summer. The grass and the dark flat rosettes where the daisy plants had been seemed to shine. As for the roses, you could not help feeling they understood that roses are the only flowers that impress people at garden-parties…
The scene is described with light and colors. It gives the information that it is a fine day. There are beautiful flowers in the garden. The tension occurs between the natural scenes and the impression. The atmosphere created by the scene is very happy. In fact the author is brilliant. She arranges the death happening during the garden party. The little heroine’s happiness is interrupted. She wants to stop the party, while others try to keep the happiness. The happy scene forms a contrast with the suffocate scene described in the following:
They (the poor’s houses) were little mean dwellings painted a chocolate brown. In the garden patches there was nothing but cabbage stalks, sick hens and tomato cans. The very smoke coming out of their chimneys was poverty-striken. Little rags and shreds of smoke, so unlike the great silvery plumes that uncurled from the Sheridan’s

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