Mansfield's short stories

The Daughters of The Late Colonel and The Garden Party depict characters in society facing the real world consequences of death. Through Josephine and Constantia in Daughters, Mansfield emphasizes how illness and death pervades not only the dead but the living as well. Death cuts the daughters off from an adult, mature life; trapped in their service to the memory of their overbearing father that leaves them ill-equipped and unprepared to live life on their own. In The Garden Party, Mansfield contrasts the seeming purity and innocence of an adolescent garden party with the realities of sudden death. She again shows a society isolated and cut off from true feelings and humanity. Again, the protagonists fail to realistically address life and are ill-equipped to recognize and deal with everyday events such as dying.

Mansfield's sisters in Daughters are emotionally and metaphorically handicapped by the memory of death and overwhelmed by the encroachment of the world caused by the death of their father. Josephine and Constantia live in constant fear and awe of their father and of the retribution he would incur on them--

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s constantly distracted from conveying her feelings about the accident and death to the others by superficialities concerning the party: "It seemed to her that kisses, voices, tinkling spoons, laughter, the smell of crushed grass were somehow inside her. She had no room for anything else" (546). In the face of death, Mansfield's protagonists have no way to cope with mortality and death. Instead, both societies are reduced to adolescent, childlike behavior of denial. In Daughters, Josephine and Constantia act like frightened school girls: though they are middle-aged and long past their prime. Just entering their dead father's locked drawer, entering his room takes a major act of courage on their part. The sisters live a fantasy world of youth endlessly recounting the past like the organ player who plays outside their window: There had been this other life, running out, bring things home in bags, getting things on approval, discussing them with Jug, and taking them back to get more things on approval, and arranging father's trays and trying not to annoy father (483). The only emotion left to the sisters is not sadness for their father in death but terror and self-pity of what remains of life: "It was inside her, that queer
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1467
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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