table of the garden party and other stories
Story
Content/plot
Major themes
Quote + technique that links with theme
Most like Larkin poem
Miss Brill
“Miss Brill," Katherine Mansfield's short story about a woman's Sunday outing to a park. The story opens with Miss Brill delighting in her decision to wear her fur. Miss Brill sees the world as a play: as though her surroundings are a set and her fellow park-goers actors. A young couple arrive and share Miss Brill's bench. Miss Brill believes they are nicely dressed and pictures them as the "hero and heroine" of the play. However, she overhears the boy make a rude remark about Miss Brill and her fur. Miss Brill goes home later on and refuses herself her usual delight of treating herself at the bakery and returns straight home instead. She then hurriedly puts away her fur back into it’s box and explains that she heard something cry from inside the box.
Life and death
Age
Loneliness
“Her room like a cupboard.” Simile is used to describe the bleak state of Miss Brill’s room. It reinforces the theme of death as the description of her room as a dark life size box prefigures another closed box, a coffin.
The bleakness of Miss Brill’s room with the room of Mr. Bleaney from the poem “Mr. Bleaney” by Phillip Larkin.
At the bay
The sun rises over Crescent Bay. Each of the characters goes about the day: Stanley’s morning swim, children playing with their cousins, Mrs Fairchild’s afternoon rest… All of this is ordered, even though the family is obviously on holiday. Conflict centres on the characters succumbing to social expectations. This is the story of an upper-middle-class household near Wellington, colonial New Zealand. It is a constricted social environment where gossip can run rife.
Class
Societal image
Nature
Freedom
Life and death
Social expectations
“Her whole time was spent in rescuing him, and restoring him, and calming him down, and listening to his story. And what was left of her time was spent in the dread of
Content/plot
Major themes
Quote + technique that links with theme
Most like Larkin poem
Miss Brill
“Miss Brill," Katherine Mansfield's short story about a woman's Sunday outing to a park. The story opens with Miss Brill delighting in her decision to wear her fur. Miss Brill sees the world as a play: as though her surroundings are a set and her fellow park-goers actors. A young couple arrive and share Miss Brill's bench. Miss Brill believes they are nicely dressed and pictures them as the "hero and heroine" of the play. However, she overhears the boy make a rude remark about Miss Brill and her fur. Miss Brill goes home later on and refuses herself her usual delight of treating herself at the bakery and returns straight home instead. She then hurriedly puts away her fur back into it’s box and explains that she heard something cry from inside the box.
Life and death
Age
Loneliness
“Her room like a cupboard.” Simile is used to describe the bleak state of Miss Brill’s room. It reinforces the theme of death as the description of her room as a dark life size box prefigures another closed box, a coffin.
The bleakness of Miss Brill’s room with the room of Mr. Bleaney from the poem “Mr. Bleaney” by Phillip Larkin.
At the bay
The sun rises over Crescent Bay. Each of the characters goes about the day: Stanley’s morning swim, children playing with their cousins, Mrs Fairchild’s afternoon rest… All of this is ordered, even though the family is obviously on holiday. Conflict centres on the characters succumbing to social expectations. This is the story of an upper-middle-class household near Wellington, colonial New Zealand. It is a constricted social environment where gossip can run rife.
Class
Societal image
Nature
Freedom
Life and death
Social expectations
“Her whole time was spent in rescuing him, and restoring him, and calming him down, and listening to his story. And what was left of her time was spent in the dread of