So Laura sets off to pay her own respects to the dead, in a moving and powerful story about coming to terms with death. ‘The Garden Party’ is a 1920 short story about a rich upper-middle-class family whose daughter, Laura, is shocked when a working-class man from the nearby village dies in an accident.Īlthough Laura insists her mother cancel their garden party as a mark of respect, the rest of her family disagree. The New-Zealand-born Mansfield (1888-1923) never wrote a full-length novel, but she was a prolific writer of short stories whose work was admired by Virginia Woolf, among many others.

Katherine Mansfield, ‘ The Garden Party’. But the story is not really ‘about’ the mark on the wall, but rather what it prompts the narrator to think about, muse upon and recollect.Īs well as speculating on what the mark on the wall might be – a small hole, or perhaps a leftover rose leaf – the narrator’s mind wanders to much bigger questions and meditations, such as the nature of life, where Shakespeare found his inspiration, and even what the afterlife might be like.ħ. This short piece is narrated by someone who recalls noticing a mark on the wall of their house.

In many ways, she found her distinctive voice when writing short stories such as this, which was published in 1917. The first two novels the English modernist writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) published were more conventional than her work that would follow later.

Best types of short stories to write