Episode 284: Best of – “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield

Summary

Episode 284: Best of – “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield

Release Date: July 8, 2025

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Introduction

In this special "Best of" episode of The Literary Life Podcast, hosts Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks, alongside lifelong reader Cindy Rollins, delve deep into Katherine Mansfield's renowned short story, "The Garden Party." This episode revisits beloved discussions and highlights key moments that showcase the art of literary analysis and the profound insights that great literature can offer.

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Overview of "The Garden Party"

"The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield is a modernist short story that intricately weaves themes of innocence, social class, and the harsh realities of life. Set against the backdrop of a seemingly idyllic garden party, the narrative explores the protagonist Laura Sheridan's journey from naivety to a nuanced understanding of the world around her.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Structural Analysis and Literary Techniques

Angelina Stanford kicks off the discussion by highlighting the story's structure, noting its similarity to other epiphany-driven narratives like James Joyce's "Araby." She points out:

"We see a lot of the same sorts of things that we saw in Araby... every short story has this epiphany moment." ([29:08])

Thomas Banks adds, emphasizing the importance of parallel scenes and symbolism:

"We have the same... I think there's something there." ([73:40])

2. Parallels to "Little Women"

A significant portion of the conversation revolves around the parallels between "The Garden Party" and Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women." Banks draws attention to character similarities and thematic echoes:

"She meets real workmen... feels like a common humanity moment." ([62:21])

Cindy Rollins concurs, suggesting that Mansfield may be using "Little Women" as a nod to explore deeper familial and societal dynamics.

3. Themes of Innocence and Experience

The trio delves into Laura's transformation, discussing her initial innocence juxtaposed with the grim reality she confronts. Cindy reflects:

"She's a descent both literal and figuratively... she's embracing some kind of maturation." ([33:50])

Banks relates this to personal experiences, sharing insights on the dissonance between romantic ideals and harsh realities.

4. Class Distinctions and Social Commentary

The conversation touches upon the story's critique of class distinctions, with references to Victorian children's literature and societal expectations. Cindy remarks:

"Now I know my black heart... it's about transforming us." ([12:03])

Thomas adds a personal anecdote to highlight how social conventions can be both protective and limiting.

5. Symbolism of the Hat and the Garden

A pivotal symbol discussed is the hat Laura wears, representing her attempt to emulate her mother and the ensuing disillusionment. Cindy interprets:

"She's saying forgiveness... she's not going back to embrace this life anymore." ([66:01])

Banks ties this to broader themes of identity and self-awareness.

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Notable Quotes with Attribution

• Angelina Stanford ([29:08]):

  "I'm excited to hear what our guests have to say because like with this story that's so rich in detail, I felt like I could use some hand-holding."

• Cindy Rollins ([10:16]):

  "It's not enough to just read all the great books... the books are not an end in themselves."

• Thomas Banks ([16:46]):

  "If we have the Holy Spirit, then everything we read has the potential to change us."

• Cindy Rollins ([27:52]):

  "These modernist writers want to leave that epiphany a bit open-ended."

• Thomas Banks ([74:12]):

  "It's like doing a logic puzzle so much fun."

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Insights and Conclusions

Throughout the episode, the hosts emphasize the importance of approaching literature as a skill rather than a purely emotional experience. They advocate for active engagement, such as searching for parallel scenes and symbolic elements, to unlock deeper meanings within texts.

Cindy underscores the transformative power of literature:

"We need to be changed by them and change the way we live our lives." ([12:03])

Thomas reflects on personal growth through literature, aligning with the podcast's overarching theme that "Stories Will Save the World."

The discussion concludes with a mutual appreciation for the layers embedded in "The Garden Party," acknowledging that each reading can unveil new interpretations and understandings.

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Final Thoughts

This episode of The Literary Life Podcast serves as a testament to the enduring relevance of classic literature. By dissecting "The Garden Party," listeners gain not only an appreciation for Katherine Mansfield's craftsmanship but also insights into their own literary journeys. The hosts' dynamic conversation invites readers to look beyond the surface and engage deeply with the stories that shape our understanding of the world.

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Notable Mention: For those interested in exploring poetry, don't miss out on the sister podcast, The Well Read Poem with poet Thomas Banks.

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Remember to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast to stay updated on future episodes and literary discussions.

Transcript

[Angelina Stanford]

Welcome to the Literary Life Podcast. We've grown quite significantly since our debut in 2019, and we've had many requests to highlight older episodes that new listeners may have missed, as well as revisit listener favorites. To honor that request, I present to you this episode of the Best of the Literary Life Podcast.

[Cindy Rollins]

Welcome to the Literary Life Podcast, where your hosts and Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins explore a life shaped by books, stories, and poetry. Each week, we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. The Literary Life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Hello, and welcome to episode 13 of the Literary Life Podcast with me, Angelina Starre, and my partner in crime, Cindy Rollins. Hey, Cindy.

[Thomas Banks]

Hello. I guess we're at the unlucky number here.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, that's ominous. Yeah, the floor in the hotel that doesn't really exist so that no one has to be on floor 13.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Here we are. Here we are.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right. That's right. Thank you to our very brave listeners who tuned in for episode 13. Just don't listen to this under a ladder or while holding a black cat. You should be fine. Cindy, how you doing?

[Thomas Banks]

I'm doing well. I've had a good week and lots of company, so I'm a little worn out from that, but always glad to have people visiting.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's good. I had a really good weekend. Mr. Banks, I saw what you did. That's right. We went to McKay's and had a fabulous time and came back with quite a haul.

[Thomas Banks]

So McKay's is a used bookstore that's kind of popular in the south, and they're just huge books. They have records, they have CDs, and they have games, but they mostly have books.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, right. So all these years, I have listened to you talk about McKay's in Chattanooga, and I knew there was a McKay's in Nashville. And it was always like, you know, this kind of Mecca. Right. I gotta make my pilgrimage to McKay's. But then I recently found out that where I'm living in North Carolina, that there are two North Carolina McKay's locations. Same. Same McKay's. So they've got the Tennessee and they've got the North Carolina location, and both of them are 20 minutes from house in two different directions.

[Thomas Banks]

Wow.

[Cindy Rollins]

So when I discovered this, of course, I turned to Mr. Banks and said, you want to go to the bookstore? Of course, he said, yes. So we went to the first one this Weekend, and we decided that we needed to wait one month before we go to the second one. That's how many books we want.

[Thomas Banks]

Some money comes in. And you've actually read some of the books? Yes, I have my latest, McKay's Mike hall, over. Sitting over here also. I'll have to post. Post that. Maybe.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes. See, maybe we should. Maybe we should say, please, Patreons, please sponsor our show so we can continue to buy books and learn more about literature.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, definitely. So I am doing that, trying to learn more about literature. Since. Since you're such an expert.

[Cindy Rollins]

I don't think I'm an expert at all. I. I don't.

[Thomas Banks]

I don't. You're insightful. I think you're ins. You have a little. You have some knowledge and insights, and you put that together. It's very helpful.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, I hope so. I hope so. I think I'm a pretty good reader, but I don't know that I'm ready to say I'm an expert. I feel like I'm painfully aware of the gaps that I personally have, you know.

[Thomas Banks]

Right, right. Well, yeah, me too. Me too. I'm painfully aware of my own.

[Cindy Rollins]

I'm sure, you know, and that. I suppose that's, you know, that's. That's good that we brought that up because, I mean, yes, in one sense, I have spent a lot of time studying books, and I know them and understand stories probably better than the average person does, since I have made this my life. I don't know that I made it my life's calling. It is my life's calling. How about that? But, you know, sometimes I'll hear people say things like, oh, there's just so many books I haven't gotten to. I'm never going to understand these books fully. Well, I feel the same way. Everyone feels the same way. You never get to the end of a classic. It never stops showing you new things. So, you know, I think we can. I try to look at reading as a skill, and I think that we can get better and better, but it's not like there's a finish line out there. We need to be discouraged because we think we're so far away from the finish line. I am hopefully very far away. I want to live a long time and keep learning.

[Thomas Banks]

Me, too. Me too. And I've read a lot, but I haven't had a lot of knowledge to go with it. But it does, you know, I can hold on. Hold on to some things when it comes up. So I'm always excited to hear what you have to say, because like with this story that's so rich that we're going to get to today as far as rich, being so rich in detail, I felt like I could use some hand holding. I'll tell you the truth, what I did, I was so Alex, my son, he got home from Africa and we. He wanted to watch Stranger Things Season 3, which we had not. You know, I only watch with if I'm with him or something. So the whole time we watched the first episode, I'm thinking, boy, I wish Angelina was here. So you could, could have been helpful in a movie also, not just the book. So that was a fun episode. I kept seeing all these little things that I got from the 80s. Like I'm like, this has got to be from that. This is from that. And then Alex even said there's, there's sandlot. And of course it was, it was a homage. Homage to sandlot. So it was fun.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, that. That's a lot of fun. I'm glad you thought of me while you were, while you're watching. I actually get a lot of messages like that. Like I read this and wished I had you with me for that. Or I saw this movie. Sometimes I get emails like that from my students, which is always really, really fun. Like, I wish you had watched this movie with me. Tell me what it means.

[Thomas Banks]

Because it's story. These are stories.

[Cindy Rollins]

Absolutely. It's story. But you know, Cindy, you are, you are seriously one of the most well read people I've ever. I've ever read. Met. I mean, you've read all of Shakespeare more than once. I have not. So here's true Life Confessions. Dim the lights and I'll put on my nighttime DJ voice and give you my confession here for lit Life After Dark. But I have never read all of Shakespeare's plays once. I am, as a reader am far more likely to obsess over one or two things, go crazy like researching it and chasing the footnotes and all that and really trying to understand this one thing than I am to read more widely. This is true about everything. You know, I've read Pride and prejudice 11 times and I read the rest of her books. Amir one time. Well, that's not Charius. I've read Emma more than once. But like. So I'm not the kind of. And I'm saying this as a flaw, I'm admitting a flaw here. I'm not the kind of reader who when I fall in love with one Shakespeare play that makes me want to go to list to hear all of them. It just makes me want to do that one over and over and over. I'm like this about everything. Music, books.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, I think you're a detail person then. And I'm a big picture person. I'm definitely a big picture person. So this is a good combination, hopefully.

[Cindy Rollins]

No, it is. It is a good combination. And I'm inspired by you. Actually, Tom and I are gonna start reading through Shakespeare's Place together because he said. And he is extraordinarily well read. He said. You know, I was telling him about how you've read all of them more than once, and he said, I think there's like, two or three I have never read. So we're inspired by you. We're gonna have Shakespeare nights over here.

[Thomas Banks]

And inspired by, well, you only to read a little bit of Shakespeare every day to get through the canon and, you know, eventually.

[Cindy Rollins]

No, that's true.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And. And the thing about me is I'm just like you, except for what happens to me is when I read one book and it talks to another book, then I have to go find the other book and read that. Mm. If it talks about another book. I mean, I started out in high school. Like, we talked about reading Little Women, and they're talking about Pilgrim's Progress, and they're in that. And I'm feeling like something's wrong. I haven't read these books, so I've just been on a lifelong quest to catch up.

[Cindy Rollins]

What a beautiful quest, though. I mean, it's the quest for all. It's the quest for all on. This is just so much fun to me, and I'm reading stuff that's out of my comfort zone right now with these. With the story. Today, for example, we have chosen. We have chosen almost all modern short stories, which is way out of my comfort zone. That is not my time period at all.

[Thomas Banks]

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

Good to be stretched. All right, commonplace quotes.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Cindy Rollins]

Who wants to go first? All right, I'm going first. Okay. So we've been talking on this show a lot about the different ways that we commonplace. And for a long time, I would just write down whatever quote I was reading on Facebook. So Facebook sort of my commonplace book. So in my. On my Facebook memories, a lot of times a quote will come up, which is so fun to see. What was I reading, you know, eight years ago? And so this. This. This came up on my Facebook. Commonplace book. We're going to rename Facebook. So this came up as my memories. I was reading this book 10 years ago, 2009. I wrote this on Facebook. I shared this quote. This is from Thomas a Kempis Imitation of Christ, which is one of my favorite books. And I had read it very slowly and devotionally back in 2009 and was commonplace in my way through it. And this was. This was the quote that had really struck me. And I think it's very apropos to so many of the things we talk about on this podcast. So here it is 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. And that's from book one, chapter three of Imitation of Christ.

[Thomas Banks]

Wow, that is amazing quote. I mean, I think we could have a whole podcast on that quote.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, right.

[Thomas Banks]

It would be amazing to think about because we're always talking about all these imaginative literature, poetry, wonder and virtue, because that's really our ultimate goal. But sometimes we are so busy talking about these things that we don't make the connection to actually being these things.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes. And I'm hoping to unpack some of this in my talk because I do think there is a connection between what we read and virtue and how it affects us. I don't think the connection is always what we think it is. I know you agree with this. Books don't make us good. Right. There's no, well, my kid needs to learn how to stop lying, so I'm gonna read this book to him and now he's gonna stop lying. That's not how it works. Right.

[Thomas Banks]

Victorian children's literature.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right, Right. And so there's a whole other process that's happen that I think does. Can. I should say, I think can help us live virtuous lives. It can be part of that, should be part of that, but it doesn't work quite the way that we. It's not input in, output out. Right. But this is such a good reminder, though, that it's not enough to just read all the great books. Right. There's something else that has to be happening to it. If we're not reading them and being changed by them and changing the way that we live our lives, and then. Then there's no point. I kept thinking of Paul and the clanging symbols. You know, like the books we read are just going to be clanging symbols if it doesn't lead to something else. It's not. The books are not an end in themselves. I think about the dragons sitting on their hoard. Right. We don't want our intellectual lives to be like that, where we Just really good hoarded all this knowledge and we're sitting on top of it. That, that's death. That's a picture of death.

[Thomas Banks]

And we know like, and we think about the Dawn Treader, what happens to the dragon on the, on the thing. You know, it's a painful transformation. And it's worth all to go through that transformation, really. I mean, I don't, we could get really deep here and I don't want to do that right when we're just talking about a commonplace quote, a Facebook commonplace quote of all things. But, you know, there's the role of the Holy Spirit, all of this. And so if we have the Holy Spirit, then everything we read has the potential to change us. And he really. We're giving our children and ourselves hooks for the Holy Spirit to use, but without his actual enlivening us, we're unable to make good use of that.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes, yes, absolutely. And you know, it makes me think of that quote from Mortimer Adler. It's not how many books we get through, it's how many books get through us. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's not. Yeah, we not, we don't want to just hoard this stuff. It's got to, it's got to transform us in some way. Our. What is the point? And I find that a very good reminder for myself personally. It's, it's very, very easy to. This is one of the reasons that I don't post year end reading lists. Not that they're wrong, because I know a lot of people ask me to do it and a lot of people enjoy seeing what other people read because it gives them ideas. I'm just, I just know my black heart. This is just Angelina's wickedness here. This isn't about. It's not about it. I'm not drawing a big picture here about it's wrong to make reading lists. I'm just saying I know myself and if I start putting a December 31st, here's all the books I read this year post that would damn my soul to hell. That would be such an act of pride. I would spend all year thinking about the public Persona of my reading lists.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, that is true for me. I found when I was blogging that it really helped me to know that I had a place to talk about the books. And that is how I've used Goodreads and how I've used. I blog through books.

[Cindy Rollins]

And your reading lists have helped so many people. I'm not, I'm just.

[Thomas Banks]

No, no, But I know I've said it a lot of times that there is the danger of being like David and numbering the books like he numbered the people. I definitely think that is a danger that we have. And so I agree with you. I don't think it has to be, but I definitely think that it can easily become that without even being aware sometimes.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, yeah, we have a remarkable ability to turn everything bad.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, we do.

[Cindy Rollins]

And also, I never wanted my reading list to make someone feel discouraged.

[Thomas Banks]

Right, right. That is true. The reason I don't think that is I'm pretty sure that I am not like. Like, reading through Shakespeare. That's not because I miss scholarly. That's because I miss plug away. Plug away, plug away. And I like to encourage people that I feel like that's encouraging. Oh, if you just read a tiny bit of Shakespeare, you eventually get through all the plays. Read a tiny bit of the Bible. Eventually you get through the whole Bible. I mean, like, you can read the Bible a minute a day, and eventually you would get to the end. It is a matter of fact, it would be about six years. So it's. I like to look at it from that angle. Not the, you know, the other. The other side of it, where. The prideful side of it, where, oh, look, I read all of Shakespeare.

[Cindy Rollins]

I found at one point in my reading life that when I knew people were gonna ask me, how many books did you read this year? That was affecting the length of the books I chose to read.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, true. That is so true. Yes. Yes. I've had that happen before. Also where I pick it. I don't want to pick a long book. I don't want to read Middlemarch this year because it will take me the rest of the year.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right. You could read three other books. No. Right. Same. Boy, we are getting. We are getting some therapy right here on the Lit Life podcast.

[Thomas Banks]

We've only had one commonplace quote.

[Cindy Rollins]

All right, Sydney, it's your turn now. Go ahead and convict me with your commonplace quote.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, here's mine, and it's not really that far off from yours. This is from CS Lewis in the Weight of Glory, and he says, if we had foolish, unchristian hopes about human culture, they are now shattered. If we thought we were building up 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 away to glory.

[Cindy Rollins]

Cindy, that's the story we read.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. It is.

[Cindy Rollins]

Holy cow. That is the story we read.

[Thomas Banks]

That's every story for me. I just. That quote is. That quote just, like, sits on my back all the time. Oh, that reminds me. You know, what if we. Yes, I'm disappointed. This person disappointed me. These people disappointed me. But you know what? It's not a moment too soon.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, you know, and I think that brings up a good point. And we saw that with Araby. That disillusionment does not equal disappointment. It doesn't have to. You know, it depends what you've been disillusioned by.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. We should be disillusioned sometimes.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right. Because not all that glitters is gold. And if you realize that now, you can. You can. You know more. You're more able to recognize the real thing.

[Thomas Banks]

You can stop looking in false places for things that aren't there, looking for them where they really are.

[Cindy Rollins]

And I think that I really felt that vibe from Joyce's story that we covered a couple of weeks ago that he's disillusioned, but it's not a despairing, dark disillusionment. It's painful. Disillusionment is always painful.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And that's why when we came to this story, I thought, I hope our listeners. So a lot of people were like, oh, that Araby. I didn't get it. I didn't like it. But then all of a sudden, we started taking the layers off of it. Not just me and you, but other people.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, no. Our readers took it and ran. I was so impressed with the.

[Thomas Banks]

And then suddenly it's a. Interesting story to all of us, and I hope that we. We can stick with this, because I. I'm amazed at. I love interacting with all of you guys because you. You're bringing the story alive to us, too.

[Cindy Rollins]

No, I was so excited, actually, was reading some of the Facebook posts to Mr. Banks the other night, because I was so impressed. And I said. I said, you know, once you really approach reading as a skill and not that literature is some subjective emotional experience and we can make it mean anything we want, but once you say it's a skill, and this is the skill, and just focusing on that one thing, look up all the proper names, right? That one thing opens up the stories. And I was just blown away by the research everyone was doing and naming all the things, you know, the poem, the song, the name of the fair, and the way that. That just blew up the story. The layer started peeling off because there were all these. These signs and indications inside the story for how to read it. I was just. I was cheering you guys. I was applauding. I was so. I felt like such a proud little mama chick. I was like, oh, look at this is so good. But not. That sounds condescending. I didn't really mean it that way because I learned. I learned that people were bringing up points that I had not thought about. And that's very, very exciting for me.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And I think this story is. We're not going to be able to cover everything in this story either, because we won't have. And it's just, you know, it's a little bit longer. And so we're going to need help. We're going to need help.

[Cindy Rollins]

I'm curious. So Araby was my pick, and the Chesterton essay was a Mr. Banks pick. But this story, I had never read before. You read it a few weeks ago and messaged me, I want to do a podcast episode on this. So what was it? What was your moment with this story that made you think, no, we have got to discuss this?

[Thomas Banks]

Well, number one, I wanted to talk about it with you because I thought there was lot here and I thought, well, this would be a great story to do because there's a lot of the figurative language that. That comes into play and stuff I thought I felt like I was missing, but I actually read it, the story first in the book, how to Read Like a Professor, I think it's called Something.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, okay.

[Thomas Banks]

And he had this story at the end of the book, and then he had some analysis of the story by three different readers, people who had been learning from him. And he asked them each to look at the story, and they each had a different take. And all three of them had a different take on the story than what I took away from the story. And I started seeing a lot of things in the story, and I decided not to go looking all over the Internet. That's the danger of. I don't want. I'm not getting on here and pretending to be someone I'm not. I mean, there is a time and a place to get some background knowledge, like on Kathryn Mansfield or, you know, that. That type of thing. But I thought, I'm not gonna go find out what everybody thinks about this story so that we can talk fresh about it. But the thing that hit me right out of the gate, if you want me to say that, go for it.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

Is that this seemed to be a parallel story to Little Women to me. And the farther I went in it, the more and more and more nods I saw to Little Women. And so I thought as we go, I'll just bring up what I saw here and there. I mean, the story starts out in the middle, basically. There's two things I noticed about the story. One, it just, you know, we just start into the story. What is that called? In media res?

[Cindy Rollins]

In media res. Uh huh.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. But then there really isn't a garden party in this story. The garden party never appears. What we hear about the garden party, we don't even get even the slightest.

[Cindy Rollins]

Details about how off stage, isn't it?

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, it is. So I thought that was super interesting. But we have this family and they have their mother and their mother is. She's a very overseeing person who's trying to take a backseat. You know, she's not really trying to take a backseat, but she pretends to be taking a backseat.

[Cindy Rollins]

Mother, I thought you were going to let us do everything.

[Thomas Banks]

And then right away we. And this is one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. So I'm making a connection to the story Little Women. We have Meg. We have this oldest daughter, Meg. And so right away I'm like, oh, Meg. That's Little Women. That reminds, you know, mother Meg. And then we have immediately Jo's. So there we have another name that's very, very similar.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, and Laurie. Yeah, you're right.

[Thomas Banks]

So then we have the next name we see is Laura. But it. You are the artistic one. That's Amy, but her name isn't. But so we don't have this straight analogy. But we have so many reasons to think this is. And she and Amy, not Amy. But Laura always felt she could do it so much better than anyone else. And that's Amy. Then we have a girl who is. Then we have a piano later on in the story, but there's nobody to play it. And I mean, they do play it, I think at one point. But the piano to me is a representation of Beth, who is not in the story. And as she died in Little Women. And sorry, spoiler alert if you haven't read Little Women. But then we have this father who is just sort of, you know, not there. And we have a brother figure named Lori. I just felt like that was too many connections. So Amy and Laurie spend a lot of time. I'm Amy. Laura. She's so Amy to me that I can't separate that in my mind. So then we have Laura spending, you know, the person who helps her the most is the brotherly figure, Lori, who is not, you know, the next door neighbor. But what was Laurie, in Little Women, if not a brother. A brother. And there's many. There's other things.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, it becomes. Becomes the brother in law.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, yes. So. So there's a lot going on here that I feel like. Oh, we have. Well, we have. At the end of the story, what. What is Laura doing? She's taking a basket to some poor neighbors.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, my gosh. Yes, you're right.

[Thomas Banks]

So she has. We have the same. When I get to that part, I'm like, no, there's got to be a connection here. This cannot be a coincidence. She's taking Little Women and she's, you know, she's making whatever points she wants to make about, you know, the class consciousness and all the different ways you can go with the story, Crossing the River and the Shadow and all that. But I just feel like she's doing it within the context of the story. Little Women.

[Cindy Rollins]

Okay, that's fascinating. I did not see any of that, but I am totally sold. That's fascinating. So then the question I always ask of my students is, it seems. I completely agree with you. She is asking us to think about Little Women. Okay, so then why? Why?

[Thomas Banks]

I did not get that far in my mind. I could not figure that out. Was it an idealized life compared to the truth? The underneath part?

[Cindy Rollins]

Okay, that's my first guess. As soon as you started saying that, I started trying to figure out how the Little Women element played in with my interpretation of the story. This is fantastic. Let's. Okay, so first, I just want to say to anybody who doesn't know Kathryn Mansfield, this is a modern short story. Modern not meaning contemporary like five years ago, but modern as in the modern literary period. She's a contemporary of D.H. lawrence and Virginia Woolf and was friends with both of them. She was born in 1888, died in 1923, very young of tuberculosis. And she's a New Zealand writer but spent a great deal of time in London. It was kind of in that London literary set. She likes to write stories about children who are artistic and creative and have some sort of insight because of that. And this story follows the same structure as Araby, that epiphany structure that is. So we're gonna. We're gonna give you this. This slice of life in this character. And it's gonna be leading up to some moment where they have this realization about something. So we see a lot of the. The same sorts of things that we saw in Araby. In fact, I started to wonder, you know, is that structure inherent in all short stories? And I kind of threw that out to Mr. Banks yesterday. And we kind of tried to figure out like every short story we could think of. We were like, yeah, young Goodman Brown. We just started toss around stories and we're like, yeah, they all kind of build up to that. So I don't know if I'm ready to say all short stories follow that structure, but I think we can say a great many short stories follow that structure where the character is being led towards some sort of epiphany. Now these, these modernist writers want to leave that epiphany a bit open ended. And I think that's probably why you had so many interpretations. So I think we can look at the story, we can look at the structure, we can look at the things that Katherine Mansfel is drawing our attention to, and then we can ask the question, what was the epiphany? Because she does not spell it out for us.

[Thomas Banks]

Right, right.

[Cindy Rollins]

And I found myself wondering if that, if that open endedness is perhaps not a little bit inherent with modernist philosophy. Like maybe some things can't be expressed, some things can't be known. Perhaps epiphanies are individual experiences. You wouldn't see that sort of thing in a medieval story where, you know, if somebody goes on a quest and has a vision, they can tell you what the vision is.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. And that was very disconcerting at the end because you're like, every time you read this story, you've got, you've got to make a little leap there at the end and say, do I, you know, is it obvious? Did I miss something? You know, I don't, I'm not really sure what her epiphany was. I mean, I know she had one, that's for sure, but I don't know for sure what it was.

[Cindy Rollins]

So I think if we very carefully look at the story and look at the parallels between the beginning and the ending of the story, which are very deliberate and just really jumped out at me. Look at the light and dark imagery and look at the movement of the narrative and the movement of the character that may give us insight into what is this journey she takes and what is the epiphany she has.

[Thomas Banks]

Right, well, good, good. That's good.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's going to be my approach. I might get it totally wrong, but this is how to read.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, well, no, that's what we need to know. And I definitely, I feel like I had a lot of insight and a lot of confusion. So I thought you would be really helpful with the confusion.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, I, that's, that's a lot of pressure. Let's see. I'm gonna end up like the mom in this story and just disappoint you horribly.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. You're sitting back going, no, Cindy, you're gonna have to do this story all by yourself.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, that. Okay, so I'm fascinated that what jumped out at you first was the Little Women. That was so good. And I did not see that at all. What jumped out? I. Of course, this is how I read. Right. What jumped out at me. I'm looking at all of the images in the opening sentences because I know that that is how the author's gonna set things up. So I' opening paragraph. And I immediately said, oh, okay, we got a Garden of Eden. This is a Garden of Eden.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

So, I mean, she says, it's like the archangels were looking over the flowers. And it's very, very heavy language. Right. So everything's blooming and beautiful, secluded, perfect, happy. There's. There's not even a hint of a serpent in this garden. Right. Everything is just lovely. Now, of course, Kathryn Mansfield's gonna be raising the question of, is this real? Is this Garden of Eden real? Is this a reality? But it definitely starts off the Garden of Eden. Now, when you raise the question, why is it called the garden party when the garden party is not even in the thing? That was the first time that I had thought of that. That was a great question. I immediately thought, okay, well, it's. It's because she's making the Garden of Eden be the central issue of the story.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, so the garden is here, but the garden party is missing.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right. But maybe the garden. The garden party. Well, I don't want to get to. I'm not going to tell you my conclusion just yet. Okay, let's just keep going.

[Thomas Banks]

All right, let's go.

[Cindy Rollins]

We've got all this Garden of Eden stuff, and then we've got the mother wanting to step aside and let the children plan the party. And so we've got all these images of childhood and innocence and youth. Okay? So I'm thinking this is a pretty standard setup for a coming of age story, that we're gonna have some kind of character who is childlike and innocent and who's going to be ushered into some adult experience.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

Okay, of course. Is what happens. But I didn't know at the beginning of what that experience would be. Just that we're being set up with sort of the scales tilted in one direction, and the movement of the story is going to carry it away. I was kind of Hoping it wasn't going to turn out to be anything too horrifically horrible. Like, if this was a Flannery o' Connor story, the. You know, the. It'd be something violent, right? That would happen.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, it would be something. Hate everybody in the story.

[Cindy Rollins]

Now, there is something violent that happens in the story, but it doesn't happen to her. Right. She observes it and it's changed violently.

[Thomas Banks]

But you do feel ominous as she's leaving. You have this feeling of ominous scariness as she. At the end of the story. Now, the other thing I want to say real quick is, before we get started, this was written in three parts, so it was like a serial. I don't know if she wrote it all at once or if she. I'd be curious to know where she stopped each time.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, that's interesting. You know. And this was also published a year before she died. Yes, she died of tuberculosis. So it was a long and painful deterioration of her health. May help us to understand the way that death is presented in the story.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, that is a good point. Yes.

[Cindy Rollins]

She's facing her own death, too, and perhaps, you know, working out feeling like that's going to be the most real thing she ever encounters. She's going to leave the illusion of this life behind and encounter what's real in death, which, of course is true. So, anyway, you're absolutely right to read that sense of ominous. I mean, the way that it turns ominous, okay, is there's a. There's quite a few things. She exits the garden and the gates shut behind her. Boom.

[Thomas Banks]

Garden of Eden.

[Cindy Rollins]

Exile from the garden. In fact, she never goes back into the garden in this story.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay.

[Cindy Rollins]

That gives us some insight into what her epiphany is. The story ends with her outside of the garden, door shut, and then she goes down the hill again. Garden of Eden is on a hill. She's going down the hill. The light, all the imagery changes at the beginning of the story. Everything's light and bright and sunshiny and happy instantly. It's shadows and shade and dusky and dark. A black knot of people in the corner. Everything's dark. Right, so you. You picked up on that right away, that she's. It's a descent both literal and figuratively. Right. She's descending down from her on high to the. To the quote, unquote, common people. Right, Right. That's what's happening now, whether or not Catherine, you know, again, we have to hold on to see what she's saying about that, because perhaps the descent to the. To the Real people was actually an ascent to reality.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

Because she seems very happy by this. About this epiphany. Right?

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, at the end she does, but it's in the middle of it, she's pretty scared. It's pretty scary as she's going through it, but then afterwards, she took something away from it.

[Cindy Rollins]

Okay, so. So we've got the set up with the light in the dark. We've got the set up with. She's young and innocent in this perfect Garden of Eden.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

And so. So, okay, so where does that go? Well, first of all, she. She's the one who. Okay, so of all the kids, which one is the one trying to step into mother's role?

[Thomas Banks]

Hmm?

[Cindy Rollins]

Laura. Right. I'll go out and talk to the workman. I'm gonna handle this. Mother, you said you were gonna let us do everything. You step aside. She's.

[Thomas Banks]

She.

[Cindy Rollins]

Even the first thing she's described as is she walks out and she tries to put on mother's voice when she talks.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, yes, yes, I did notice that.

[Cindy Rollins]

So if this is a coming of age story, at the very beginning, what's being presented is a child trying to be like her mother. Yes. Okay. So I actually thought the story was gonna go a whole different direction than it did. So well done to Kathryn Mansfield there for. In an unexpected way, about what the mother represented and whether or not that was the path toward experience and adulthood that she needed to take. So she. But immediately when she tries to sound like the mother, she feels ashamed by the voice that comes out.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

Stammers and realizes she's just a child. So there's all this tension here of trying to step into this mother role and it being really awkward and even condescending.

[Thomas Banks]

And she. She. I feel like she recognizes that a little bit. Like, she stammered and was ashamed.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

I think she was ashamed because she was seeing that she was looking down on these people and she's trying to relate to them. Mm. Mm.

[Cindy Rollins]

And she's got the bread and the butter.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

Which I think is. That's childish. It makes her feel like she's. I'm just. I'm out here eating like, you know, this is not how adults. My mother would have not come out with her breakfast in her hand.

[Thomas Banks]

Right, right.

[Cindy Rollins]

So she's very aware that she doesn't measure up. Okay. So, yes, let's talk about the workman. That's an extremely romantic encounter with them.

[Thomas Banks]

Right, right.

[Cindy Rollins]

Not romantic like I'm in love, but romantic idealized. Right.

[Thomas Banks]

Like she's wanting to be like them. She's wanting to relate to them. She's wanting to figure them out and be broad minded. Maybe.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes. You have to. To compare this scene with the scene at the end. Because she's watching these men. Right. She feels a sense of wonder about them and a common humanity. I'm one of them. I feel very much like a working girl right now. Which of course means something different to her than it means to us. But you know, a working class person and not like a rich person who's never gonna have a job. This is totally parallel to at the end when she's watching the dead body of a working class man and she feels that here's the thing.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. Okay. That's a total parent working man living. And then later she sees a dead working man.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes. Who somehow still seems more alive to her than her friends of the same class. Right. So she looks at these working men and she says, why can't the boys that visit me be like that? They seem more real to her right now. I was very curious. So that kind of romantic idealization is happening in the Garden of Eden. And I wasn't sure which way this story, it was going to go. I wasn't sure if the disillusionment was going to be. There's nothing romantic about a working class man. He's just a regular human being.

[Thomas Banks]

Right, right. I figured that was where it was going.

[Cindy Rollins]

I really thought that's where it was going to go. But that's not where she took it. And again that. That's the artistry. Right. But she's working within the confines of the structure of the story. And she's setting up very clearly setting up certain tensions, but that doesn't mean, you know where she's going to go. And then so the scene with the lavender and he smells and she just feels like that's such a real. They're just more real to her. And she's very. And everything else about her life is very dreamlike. So then she starts talking about class distinctions. Now what's interesting to me in that conversation is what she's doing is contrasting her view with her mother. Right.

[Thomas Banks]

Mm.

[Cindy Rollins]

Mother would say this and this, but this is what I say. And so now you're seeing some hesitancy, like, so she wants to be like her mother, but she's also not like her mother.

[Thomas Banks]

Right, right.

[Cindy Rollins]

Okay. So you've got this little Garden of Eden family here, but who are the characters who go out into the world?

[Thomas Banks]

You mean in the. At the end of the story or.

[Cindy Rollins]

At the Beginning of the story.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, who. Who goes out into the world? The workmen?

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, the father and the brother.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, the father and the brother, yes. Because they're not really around.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes. So they're described as. They're headed out the door, they're going to office. They go out. So they are the characters who go out and come back in. So both Laurie and the father are a little more in touch with reality than the mother is.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

Mother is completely out of touch with reality. Yes. So when they have the discussion about should they cancel the party, and her just insane response shows you how disconnected with reality she is, that what's real to her is the bubble of the garden party, the bubble of their little fake Garden of Eden. But it becomes more and more apparent through the story that that's not reality.

[Thomas Banks]

And, you know, I. And this goes along with the Lewis quote, too. And I don't mean to take it out of what you're going. I don't want to mess up your flow here.

[Cindy Rollins]

No, go, go.

[Thomas Banks]

When you think about. I know that my husband felt that way about me a lot of times. So I'm raising these eight boys with a lot of romantic ideas about life. And my husband was going out and working 12 hours a day in the real world and coming back, and there was a dissonance there between my romantic ideals and, you know, what he was seeing in the real world. And I do think sometimes that. And then I was not always willing to listen to his ideas because I was very wrapped up in the romance of it all. And later, of course, I realized as the boys started going out into the world and they started shedding the romantic views that I had. And I don't mean this in a rebellious way at all, but I had to wake up and see, no, I've got to prepare these boys for the real world, not the pretend world that I think I'm pretending to prepare them for. And I just think that is often what happens in a home with the mom. Mom doesn't want to trust dad because he has a broader view, maybe because he is going out into the world. And I don't know. I just think that I would have been better off to listen to my husband in those early years when I was still romanticizing the outside world, which I was. I was inside. It was good. It was good to be at home. Home was good, but it wasn't everything.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah. In the scene where they say there's been an accident, she says, inside the garden. And they say, no. Oh, thank God. I will Confess how troubled I was by the fact that I identified with that. Like, how often am I upset when the real world and the needs of reality intrudes upon my little dream world.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. I mean, it's really easy to see, but it's also easy to recognize. Yeah. We do this, really. We do this all the time where we are the mother many times when we can see how bad it is. But how often is that the. The true reality of the way we live? Mm.

[Cindy Rollins]

Mm. And I don't think that Karen Kathryn Mansfield is doing anything quite so clumsy as, you know, fantasy world bad, real world good. Just. Just that.

[Thomas Banks]

No, and I agree with that. Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah. It's more complicated, I think, which I don't think anybody's bad in the Sheridan family. In fact, it really almost felt like a Flannery o' Connor moment when the mom's like, oh, yeah, what? Just bring them the cream puffs. And you're just like, oh, you know, it's well meaning, but so Marie Antoinette, so out of touch with. Just let them eat. I realize she's grieving over her dead husband, is in shock, but it'll be such a treat for the kids, and she'll have something to give when people come over. Just completely clueless.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

Meanwhile, the woman's in a catatonic state. That's the reality, right?

[Thomas Banks]

Absolutely, yes. And there's just so much imagery going around that. I mean, there's the food, the lilies, flowers. The lilies. The canna lilies, which I.

[Cindy Rollins]

Innocent and pure.

[Thomas Banks]

I do not like canna lilies. Let me just say this. I don't find them very attractive in a yard.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, but the thing about the lilies that was so interesting is the mother says, take her the flowers. That class is always impressed with lilies.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, but yet she had wanted them so desperately too. How does that fall in with that?

[Cindy Rollins]

Exactly. And then. Oh, but don't let. Don't. Don't actually take it to them because it'll mess up your dress.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. That was funny. I mean, that was, you know, shameful and funny. Oh, okay. Well, we'll leave those because they would like them, but we wouldn't want to mess up our dressing, too.

[Cindy Rollins]

I've done that.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. And what about the hat? I mean.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, yes, the hat. Let's talk about the hat. Okay, so let me just keep going here. So, okay, so the women, all very, very sheltered. I thought the scene with the song really highlighted that. She's. Jo sits down to sing about the weary life.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Cindy Rollins]

Smiling and singing about the weary life. It stops, says, doesn't my voice sound so good, Mummy? Right. I mean, just. Just the total disconnect of what she's singing and what she's thinking about. Right.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Cindy Rollins]

So it's just. They are just living in a. They are out of. I'm going to say it over and over.

[Thomas Banks]

They're just out of touch.

[Cindy Rollins]

Now, the cream puffs is what happens next. And Laura and Joe's had been saying how grown up they are. And there's a line that says, the cream puffs arrive, but Laura and Joe's were too grown up to care.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

But then when they get offered to have them, they eat them.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Cindy Rollins]

With relish. Right. So again, you have that tension of, you know, they're right at that. Not adult, not child, kind of struggle, age. So then death enters the garden. Well done. Right. Somebody carries in the news. Death, Death has entered the garden. And Laura's immediate response is to want to call off the party. And so then we see her going through a series of conversations where she's like, but isn't it. Isn't it wrong to celebrate and party and have a band playing when these people are grieving? And then you see the family's response to that. Right. Jose's thoughts are just very, you know. Well, they don't really care about those things. They this, they that. It's, you know, and the assumption that he was drunk, the assumption that he somehow brought this upon himself, that's very. That's a common criticism of that kind of class distinction that. That you think, well, if they're in poverty, they've done something to deserve that.

[Thomas Banks]

And they say it. They say, you know, I don't even know how these people live anyway. They, you know, so that what? Yeah, so one of them died. Of course they died. They're gonna die all the time, and we can't help that. And then she says, don't be extravagant. Which is. Don't exaggerate is what she's basically saying in our language. But she had. She said, well, the man's right outside our front gate. But, you know, and then we hear, what in the world. Why would they even have that neighborhood and out there.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah. So there's zero compassion. And just. That's an eyesore for us in our garden to have to even know that's out there. And so that speech was the first time that I realized mother's adulthood was not going to be the thing that the character was going to be moving toward, because mother's adulthood was like, the garden, isolated and a fantasy and sheltered and not in touch with reality. So that was probably going to be a movement in the wrong direction. So she can either become an adult like Mother or something else. That seemed to be what the story was setting up. So Laura is. She hears Mother's position and she starts to be influenced by it, but she still feels like something's wrong. Then Mother gives her the hat. All right, so here we are. The hat, I think, is a big, big symbol in the story. What do you think is going on with the hat?

[Thomas Banks]

Well, I don't know. That's what I want to know. I know it's a big symbol, but. And I know it's. It. Maybe it represents her mother and her world that, you know, like a choice, like, I'm gonna wear the hat and be. Be this girl someday or. And it's a temptation. It's the temptation to be the. To not have the awakening.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, yes, I think you're. I think you're right on. So a few different. If we. If we see this as a story of innocence, moving to experience childhood, moving to adulthood, whether or not she's going to be embracing the world of the garden or the world outside the garden.

[Thomas Banks]

And again, the part of adulthood you're saying.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes, because they all say, I've never seen you look so grown up before.

[Thomas Banks]

Right, Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

But this is a particular kind of grown upness. Right. It's Mother's grown upness.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

Because what happens is Mother gives her the hat. Now, Laura has been trying to be like Mother at the beginning of the story. And as soon as she puts on the hat, she takes on Mother's views. Right. She looks more grown up. She looks like an adult. She starts saying people like that.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

And she sees herself in the mirror. And immediately she saw herself. And she never saw herself look like that before. And then she hopes her mother is right is what comes right after. So as soon as she sees herself in the hat, that vision of herself changes her total, her whole. Oh, I hope Mother's right. Right. Not maybe Mother's right. I hope she's right. I hope we don't have to cancel the garden party. I look so nice. It'd be such. So terrible that I couldn't wear this hat and the cream puffs would go to waste. And how dare this. This man's issues affect our garden party.

[Thomas Banks]

And she says she's being absurd. Her mother says, you're being absurd. And she says it's not. It's not very sympathetic to spoil everybody's enjoyment as you're doing now. And that just reminds me so much of Sense and Sensibility, where the brother and his wife are trying to decide, yes. They start out with, well, we'll give them this much money. And by the end it's like, well, they should actually be paying us money. Because it's very inconsiderate of them to actually be alive so that we have to give them some of our money. But it is that way of justification of how we. How. And Charlotte Mason always says that we, you know, our brains, our function are made to prove our initial thoughts. And David Hicks says, that's a stoic idea. But we give ourselves an official. An initial thought. It's okay that we're gonna have this party. And then we come up with. And then our brain is able to make it okay.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right. Now, when I was trying to figure out. So she puts on the hat, and this is very clear to me that she was putting on Mother. Right?

[Thomas Banks]

Right. Gonna become like Mom.

[Cindy Rollins]

And she starts to sound like mom and think like Mom. When I was trying to figure out if this was a good thing or not. The sentences in the bottom of that paragraph tells us that it's not a positive thing. Right. Because what happens is Laura can no longer see that a movement toward blindness is never gonna be good in a character. Especially if this is a story that's moving to an epistle.

[Thomas Banks]

It's blurred, unreal.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right. So the image of the dead man and his family began to seem unreal to her like a picture in a newspaper. Now, I. Interesting, because that's a distance thing, right? This is something you just read about in the newspaper. You can just discard that and ignore it or scroll past it, but. But that's not who he really is, their neighbor.

[Thomas Banks]

And so she. Okay, so that makes more sense of the first scene. She meets real workmen, and they're real. And then she hears about the death, and that makes it more real because she knows these workmen. And now. Now they're back to being just a blurry picture and a newspaper.

[Cindy Rollins]

Very good. Yes, that's exactly right. Exactly right. So she's. She's seeing the world more like how Mother sees, which is to not see these people. They're just. Because when the mother disc. Why does even Buddy even live there? Anywhere? There's just this background nuisance to her. Now, I was. You know, when I'm trying to figure out what does it mean that she tells her epiphany to Laurie at the end. Right. So.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, it is. Right away. She. But we do have the scene with Laurie where she. I'm going to tell him.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes, that's what I was getting to. Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes. So when we want to know why Laurie, we look to see how Laurie is in the beginning story and see if there's a parallel there. Right. So we say that there's a parallel between her looking at the workman at the beginning of the story and being filled with wonder and looking at the body of the workman at the end of the story and being filled with wonder. And if we know that there's a conversation with Laurie at the end, we see that there is a conversation with Laurie at the beginning, so. Yes, go ahead. What happens there?

[Thomas Banks]

Well, she decided when he says she looks pretty or looks so grown up and the hat, she decides she's going to ask him because she trusts him.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yep.

[Thomas Banks]

But then when he tells her how beautiful she looks or cute or whatever, then she decides not to ask him at that point. She just lets that slide. So she never does ask him.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right.

[Thomas Banks]

What he. So.

[Cindy Rollins]

So Laurie is obviously trusted. Laurie goes out into the world. Now, I thought it was interesting that the father.

[Thomas Banks]

He.

[Cindy Rollins]

The mother thinks he's terribly inappropriate, that he brings up the death.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, right.

[Cindy Rollins]

But see, Mr. Sheridan has a foot in the real world, Right. And apparently so does Laurie, because she trusts him there, and so she's gonna ask him, should we cancel the party? And whatever Laurie says is gonna go, she says. But then he compliments her on the hat. Okay, so, you know, all those things, she's stepping into that role. And so she doesn't ask him because mother doesn't want to know if it's right or wrong.

[Thomas Banks]

Right, Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

So she doesn't want to be challenged there. So Laurie is never portrayed as living in a delusion.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay. Okay. So we don't. We don't get to hear him say it's okay to have the party or it's not okay.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right. She just doesn't ask him. So. So whatever's going on with Laurie, he has not been described as being part of the little bubble of unreality. So she's so enjoying the compliment, she says nothing. Then you're right. The party. It's just the party ripens slowly. Faded petals. That's quite an image.

[Thomas Banks]

Mm.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's. That's a flower image. It's a death image, too.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right. So. So that. That's over now.

[Thomas Banks]

In.

[Cindy Rollins]

When they're at the party, though, they're just in this little happy bubble. Right. Completely disconnected. The troubles of the real world. And Mrs. Sheridan. So Mr. Sheridan says, did you hear about the accident? Mrs. Sheridan says, yes, it nearly ruined the party.

[Thomas Banks]

Now, he was. Was he, like, not at the party? It sort of sounds like he disappears. Like he. He didn't know about the party. Like he went to work and they had a party.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, she keeps saying it's for the children. I was wondering about that, too. So maybe he just comes at the end.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. I'm thinking maybe he was at work and he comes back because then he has this news about, you know, he hasn't brought it up all day, hasn't been there. Mm. But anyway, I'm not sure about.

[Cindy Rollins]

But so. But in that conversation, Mrs. Sheridan says, oh, Laura wanted to cancel the whole thing. And then Laura response is, what? How does she feel in that moment?

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, you're teasing me. Don't.

[Cindy Rollins]

She doesn't want to be teased because now she's. She's identifying with the mother. And so she sees that as some embarrassing, childish thing she had said.

[Thomas Banks]

She wants to be distanced from cared about people. How silly of her. That was not what she should have done.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right.

[Thomas Banks]

Comes back and says it was a horrible affair all the same. Mm.

[Cindy Rollins]

And Mrs. Sheridan thinks it's completely tactless of her husband have brought this up.

[Thomas Banks]

Why?

[Cindy Rollins]

Because you don't want a hint of a serpent in the garden. She wants to pretend that this is the Garden of Eden, and she doesn't want any reminder that that's not reality. Now, you know, Kathryn Mansfield is interested in some of her earlier writing especially, really pushed back hard on sort of class reform issues. And so this sort of condescending attitude of the upper class would have been something she'd have been very sensitive to and would have wanted to portray that as a negative thing. So, I mean, we're definitely seeing that here. And then Mrs. Sheridan, you know, has her, well, let's just send them the party food. And like I said before, total Marie Antoinette moment. And that sort of snaps Laura a little bit out of the fog. She immediately thinks, this is not a good idea.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

And the mom's like, oh, it'll be so much fun, and put in a basket and you'll go. And they're gonna. She just has this vision that they're gonna be so grateful. They're gonna grateful for these flowers that they like special cream puffs. I guess she just thinks that, you know, the kids in the middle of the grief of the death of their father, gonna be like, yay, cream puffs.

[Thomas Banks]

And because they're giving it to them. Oh, my goodness. How often are we. Yes. It's like it does become this thing where someone is generous to us from their perspective. We then suddenly, not only are. Are we going through a hard time, but now we have a new requirement on us. We have to be grateful to them for giving us something that we maybe really didn't help us at all.

[Cindy Rollins]

So then Laura says that she thinks she's different from the rest of the family, and then she leaves. And as we said before, it's all this dark image. And I think it's super significant that the gates close behind her. I mean, that's. That's Adam and Eve cast out from the garden right there. Right.

[Thomas Banks]

And right away we start having. You know, we have this dog that comes up. He's a shadow. I mean, what is that? What is this dog? That's a shadow?

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, I mean, what is it? Is it a. It's not Anubis cerebrus. Is it the. The dog of Hades?

[Thomas Banks]

That's right. There you go. Okay. Okay. Yes. So she's going towards hell, basically. She's going down, like you said. I got that. I got the damn.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, good, good. And you got that she was going into dark.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, I did. And she's crossing over. Doesn't she have to, like, cross the street? So.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, that's very good. Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

So. Oh, the broad road, which is coming to me, like the broad river. Broad is a water term also.

[Cindy Rollins]

So that's really good.

[Thomas Banks]

And in the. And okay. So then she begins to see. Now she's in hell, basically with these people and.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right. So she's in hell from the perspective of Mrs. Sheridan.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

So we don't want to spiritualize this, that the Sheridan was heaven, and she's left heaven and gone to hell, and now she's happy. From Mrs. Sheridan's perspective, the. The aristocracy is heaven, and all these people are just living in this hell.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

And so. But. But she. So she goes down and she has a descent into Hades, essentially.

[Thomas Banks]

Right, right, right.

[Cindy Rollins]

As she's going down.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Cindy Rollins]

What's that?

[Thomas Banks]

A visit? Like.

[Cindy Rollins]

Like a. Yeah, like Odysseus, like you're gonna go and come back. Because she doesn't stay there. She turns around and she leaves.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

And she needs Laurie.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, right.

[Cindy Rollins]

This is. This is when she's gonna have her epiphany. So she will move from innocence to experience, and this is when she's going to embrace some kind of maturation. But it's not gonna be the model of her mother. And we know that because she apologizes about the hat to the dead man.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay.

[Cindy Rollins]

And feels deeply ashamed that she's wearing the hat. So as she's having this descent, she's. She's slowly realizing how out of touch with reality she is. Right. I'm wearing a party dress. I wish I had a coat. You don't wear a party dress to a funeral. I just. She realizes that she's the one in the wrong here. She's deeply embarrassed and humiliated by this. She becomes very self conscious about the hat. Why? Why am I wearing this hat? Anything but this hat. Right. And it's probably a mistake to have come, but it's too. They. They see her and they bring her in and. Okay, so what do you think's going on at the end there now? Now that we've set it up and you've been reading it. Right. So then what happens? She. She has this basket of food. She wants to just leave it in. Leave the basket with them and leave. But they won't let her.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

They have their own social conventions. Right. That she has to follow. You have to go see the wife. You have to see right body.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, you know, that is true. So my. My in laws are from the deep South. They were from Savannah. And I remember going to the very first funeral in the family and everybody's there, and my mother in law came up to me and I did not know the person who died. And. And I was very young, I was like 19 years old. And they were like, you have to go over and look at the body, and then you have to go tell the person that the body looked good.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes. That is a really weird southern thing.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And I was like, no, I'm not going to do that. And then my husband talked to her and was like, you have to go look at the body and you have to say, he looked good to people. So that totally freaked me out that we had this social convention and I. It was rather horrifying to me also.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, it is. It is totally. I can remember a lot of funerals when I was little and just standing there listening to everybody say, oh, she looks good. She looks so good. They really did a good job, didn't they? And it's like, she's dead. Y' all realize you're talking about how good a dead body looks, but.

[Thomas Banks]

And yet I wonder. There must be something to that. Even though it seems absurd, There must be something about that that is in our spirit that they would have this.

[Cindy Rollins]

Custom well, it might be connected to the fact that Laura says, he looks sleeping. And I think we want to think of our loved ones as released from suffering. Let's say it was a long illness or something. Like, you know, they seem set free.

[Thomas Banks]

They're in a better place. Their last moment was good. They look good. Yeah. Yes. Okay, so she's being led down the dark passageway by the little woman in black. Yeah, so you tell me, because I don't know.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, what's interesting is that before Laura leaves the garden, the mother thinks about warning her and then decides it's better to say nothing. What do you think she was gonna warn her?

[Thomas Banks]

I don't know. That. That. That they have these customs.

[Cindy Rollins]

I think she was gonna say, don't look at the bottom.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay. Okay.

[Cindy Rollins]

I don't know for sure, but that was my. My guess is that she was. She was going to try to protect the child's innocence. You know, saying, don't, don't go. They might try to make you look at the body. Just don't. But decides it's better not to say anything. And I kind of read the better not to say anything as, again, an attempt to preserve innocence. I'm not even gonna make the suggestion of this horrible thing to my dog, right?

[Thomas Banks]

And hopefully nothing will happen.

[Cindy Rollins]

But in literature, 100%, if a character says, I should warn this person, but I'm not, it always happens. 100%. That's a literary setup.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm gonna write a story where it doesn't happen.

[Cindy Rollins]

Okay, good luck with that. Let me see how that turns out for you.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, they'll hate it.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, gosh. Like, if you ever read Dracula, every character is like, ooh, should we tell her that we think of vampires outside our window? No, definitely not. That might freak her out. Next victim.

[Thomas Banks]

Boom.

[Cindy Rollins]

You know, every time. Well, that's a. That's a whole other motif, actually, about knowledge. And knowledge is power, and withholding knowledge puts people in danger. So. So anyway, yeah, so she. So she goes and she sees the dead man now. So we've got all of this set up. Light to dark innocence to experience childhood to adulthood. We have all these tensions. We have, and. But we have. The biggest thing is we have the parallel scenes to the beginning. So she looks upon the body of this dead man, and she is just as enchanted by it as she is by the workman at the beginning of the. Of the story, right? And he looks asleep, he looks happy. He looks like he has been ushered into some new reality in his dead state. He seems more Real to her than the people at the garden party.

[Thomas Banks]

And if she's never seen a dead body, then that itself is an epiphany. That he. Peaceful.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

I realized that she had all these horrible visions about this. And now. But look, he's just a peaceful guy.

[Cindy Rollins]

And she thinks he looks beautiful and full of wonder. So she's having this total moment, like, I feel like when she's talking to the workman in the beginning, there's a common humanity moment. Like she realizes the common humanity over the. Over the lavender.

[Thomas Banks]

Do we not bleed? Yes.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right. And I felt like the same thing's happening here. She's looking at him and feeling like. Yeah, you know, memento mori. Right. We're all gonna die. Remember your death. And before.

[Thomas Banks]

Can we go back up, I want to ask one question, though. You'd like to look at him, wouldn't you? Em's sister said. And then she. She said, don't be afraid, my lass. And now her voice sounded fond and sly. What does that mean? And fondly she drew down the sheet. Do you think that she was looking forward to this? Like, I'll show this little prissy girl what you know, it's like she was. She fondly drew this sheet down. She's happy to do it. She's happy to show death to this young, pretty, dressed up girl, maybe. Or is sly mean something else there? I just. Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

I'm not sure. You're. I'm not sure.

[Thomas Banks]

All right, well, we'll just throw that out there and see what happens.

[Cindy Rollins]

He looks a picture. There's nothing to show. Come along, my dear.

[Thomas Banks]

Laura came.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah. So he's sleeping. Dreaming. Never wake him up again. His. His eyes were closed. They were blind under the closed eyelids. Now he's blind, but he can see, right? Because he's. He's seeing what's real after death. He was given up to his dream. So it's almost like the garden party is a fake dream, but this guy's in a real dream. Okay, so what did gardens and seeing that makes her realize the falseness of what she just came from? Right. What did garden parties and baskets and lace frocks matter to him? Well, what does it matter to anybody in death, Right?

[Thomas Banks]

Is she saying it doesn't even matter that I'm wearing a lace rock right now? I think it's okay. It's okay that I made this social. Mm. Mistake.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

Because it doesn't even matter. This doesn't matter.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right. So she says this, too. So he was far from all Those things. He was wonderful, beautiful. While they were laughing and while the band was playing. So she's. She's connecting what was happening at the garden party. The laughter in the band. So the joy, the feasting. This marvel had come to the lane. Right. So. So at the same time, there's, like, the fake joy and. And the real that.

[Thomas Banks]

That this man had died and was in a better. Had gone on to a better place.

[Cindy Rollins]

Happy. Happy. All is well said that sleeping face. This is just as it should be. I am content. But all the same, you had to cry. And she couldn't go out of the room without saying something. So she gives a sob and says, forgive my hat.

[Thomas Banks]

So. So she's still thinking about herself there.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, maybe I read it more metaphorically.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay.

[Cindy Rollins]

What is Forgive me being like my mother. Forgive me that I came here.

[Thomas Banks]

I was this person when I came.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah. And I was this person earlier when I had the party, instead of honoring you.

[Thomas Banks]

So nature recognizes where the problem is. The hat is the problem, that the mother is the problem and not.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right. Right. So when she then leaves Hades to go back.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. Mm.

[Cindy Rollins]

I think it's clear that she. If the last thing she said is forgive my hat, that she's not going back to embrace this life, I think that's the implication, or at least. Well, I mean, it's not like she's gonna run away from home, but she's not gonna live in that delusion anymore.

[Thomas Banks]

She's. She's now awake and she's.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right. That's right. So she. She leaves on her own. She goes past, you know, down the path, past the dark people. And then she meets Laurie. And then we go. He stepped out of the shadow, so Laurie's not in the dark.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay. Okay.

[Cindy Rollins]

Is that you, Laura? Yes. Mother was getting anxious. Was it all right? Yes. Quiet. And then they have this. This last scene here, and he says, are you crying? And she says, yes. And so here again, parallel scene where she couldn't tell Laurie last time because she was wearing the hat.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

Now she has said, you know, forgive the hat. And she is telling him, and she's crying, and she's telling him what she genuinely feels. Okay. So, no. Was it awful? No, sobbed Laura. It was simply marvelous. But Laurie, she stopped. She looked at her brother. Isn't life. She stammered. Isn't life what life was? She couldn't explain. No matter. He quite understood. Isn't it, darling? Said Laurie.

[Thomas Banks]

So that's very satisfying, that part, because it's. It's. Somebody understands her.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes. And we see she's had that common humanity moment with her brother. There's some deep understanding between the two of them.

[Thomas Banks]

So she's not going back alone. She's not going back to this world where nobody understands her.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right. So we know she's had some kind of epiphany.

[Thomas Banks]

We've.

[Cindy Rollins]

We know she's moved from light to dark, back into light, because at the end, they're not in the shadow.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

We know that she has rejected whatever her mother represented. And she's had some kind of epiphany which has filled her with a deep understanding that she can't articulate. So what does that have to do with Little Women? Cindy?

[Thomas Banks]

Wow. You just love to ask me these really hard questions. Like, you get something, you catch something. Then I'm like, my brain doesn't work. Yeah. I'm so old. So what does that have to do with Little Women? I don't know. What? What?

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, I don't know. I don't know.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. I don't know what that has to do with Little Women. I think that. I think. I mean, that's a good question. I'd like to think about that for a while.

[Cindy Rollins]

Okay. So here's my first thought off the top of my head. Could be completely wrong. Louisa May Alcott was a transcendentalist and lived on a commune where they were going to create heaven on earth and make. And live in a Garden of Eden. And it blew up in their faces. It did shock. I know. Story at 11. Have I ever heard that story before? So, you know, maybe there's something about that disillusionment.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. If it's going back to Louise May Alcott, that broadens it out a little bit. I definitely think she's. Maybe she is going back. Maybe she is talking about the Transcendentalists and saying this beautiful world and.

[Cindy Rollins]

Or maybe the only way you can transcend this world really, is through death. We're always gonna have to be living in that tension, I guess, between the dream state and reality.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. I mean, it could just be as simple as that. She was pointing out that Eden isn't found in the family. Maybe that's what she's trying to say, that we have to find our own Eden, and it won't be found. Because in Little Women, we definitely have. This family is the Eden, and the individual is not. I mean, each of the girls are very individualistic, though, so. I don't know.

[Cindy Rollins]

Know.

[Thomas Banks]

I don't know.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, Jo definitely goes her own way. That's a really Interesting connection. I mean, I haven't read Little Women in a million years, so I don't know off the top of my head what it would be. But. But yeah, I think. I think. And I think the class issues, I don't remember that being a huge thing in Little Women, but I might just not remember.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, the interesting thing, when the mother and Little Women take. And I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about this because I didn't have time, but the mother and Little Women, she puts the basket together and she goes off and she. The girls give up their. They give up their breakfast so that other people can have their breakfast on Christmas morning. And then later, Lori's grandfather replaces their breakfast with a much better breakfast.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, maybe that's it, Cindy. Maybe it's that we're supposed to think of Little Women and it's supposed to stand out to us that Mrs. Sheridan herself does not go.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, that's true. Yeah. So Laura goes instead of Mrs. Sheridan, and that was different. So that's one of the things about story. Like, there's no doubt in my mind she's giving a nod to Little Women. I just don't see how there could be any other way about it.

[Cindy Rollins]

You've got me convinced.

[Thomas Banks]

But there is not a. It's not a direct parallel. It's. It's like she's asking us to look at it, but she's not. She's. She's not. It's not a copy of Little Women. So. Yeah, so maybe there is something there. It fascinates me. Like with Araby. After we read it and we talked about it, then we realized that I didn't know that he had gone to the fair. In real life, James Joyce had gone to Araby, and that came back later. And I think, you know, this is another one of those stories where it just. There's a lot of layers here, and I don't think we've gotten to them all, and I don't think we will, but maybe we'll get further. You know, there'll be. There'll be some times. There'll be some people who see some things.

[Cindy Rollins]

I'm glad you brought that up, because that's a very fine point. I mean, you and I talked for like another week about Araby.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Cindy Rollins]

So these, these podcast conversations are not the end all discussion. This is just. We're just trying to open up some of the layers. But. But yeah, we saw a lot more. People were showing us research about the way that the Irish felt about the English and That seemed to be much, much more of a part of the story than I had realized. So that was really interesting to me. And I think we'll see the same thing here. I think you're right that the Little Women nod is pretty clear what she's trying to do with it. Exactly. I don't know. But anytime that an author is making that kind of reference, they're wanting you to do a compare and contrast, just like. Like the. So that would be a comparison to something in the story, to outside the story, and. But there are also comparisons inside the story to other things inside the story, and that would be things like your double scene. So the beginning scene.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

So this is when I say, you know, the story will tell you how to read it. This is one of the many ways that it does that, where there's a repeating scene. So you have two scenes in here repeated. Right. You have. Well, maybe more than two, but for sure. To the workman at the beginning, the workman at the end of the two conversations with Laurie, that's very deliberate. She's. She's bookending the whole story with that. And she wants you to say, how is this the same? How is this different? And that's going to be what's going to open up the story to tell you what is. She's doing with all of this. Because it's a different. It's a very, very different conversation with Laurie at the end than earlier when there's no conversation in Little Women.

[Thomas Banks]

Amy, Laura, Amy, if they're similar, marries Laurie. And then here at this story, they end up together at the end. So I think there's some stuff going on there. I just haven't been able to wrap my mind around it. It'll be fun in the coming weeks to see if my mind works out some of this or if somebody else's mind works out some of this. I think that'll be fantastic. I can't wait to hear what people say, because it'll be very helpful.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, I think that when you said that you think in Little Women you've got a family being represented as an Eden, I think you're probably very, very close to getting at what Kathryn Mansell is getting at.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, maybe she's just saying the individual. It's more of an individual thing. I don't know. I think everybody gets excited now because you're teaching us this way, Angelina. So that when we each of these stories, maybe we'll do better and better. I feel like, oh, this is like doing a logic puzzle so much fun.

[Cindy Rollins]

It is so much fun and it's exciting. It's very, very rewarding to me when I see people on the Facebook page expressing that, okay, I took this thing you taught us and it opened up this story in this way that's really, really exciting to me. So yes, always be looking for those parallel scenes, those doubles. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. And in a short story it's so easy to find them because you're dealing with such a short, compacted moment. It can be more difficult in a long novel because you forget what happened at the beginning. But if you're really careful about looking at the structure, you will see that there's almost all of the stories are the author is setting up a bunch of stuff at the beginning and and then answering it at the end. Always right.

[Thomas Banks]

Very good.

[Cindy Rollins]

Thank you for listening to the Literary Life Podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with [e-mail] Join the Conversation at our member only Patreon Forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcast, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem and now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.

[Angelina Stanford]

The Truly Great by Steven 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 in singing, whose lovely ambition was that their living, 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 and worlds before our earth, never to deny its pleasure in the morning's 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 fated 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 center born of the sun. They traveled a short while toward the sun, and left the vivid air signed with their honor.