Great question! Laura is of course the young and rather
idealistic young woman through which Mansfield shows the class-consciousness that
dominates the novel. She is introduced as a character who deliberately questions class
distinctions as she watches the workmen put up the marquee. Note what she
says:
It's
all the fault, she decided, as the tall fellow drew something on the back of an
envelope, something that was to be looped up or left to hang, of these absurd
class distinctions. Well, for her part, she didn't feel them. Not a bit, not an
atom...
She imagines herself
to be "just like a work-girl" as she takes a bite of her bread-and-butter. This attempt
to erase class distinctions finds expression when a working-class neighbour is
accidentally killed. Laura feels that the party has to be
cancelled.
However, the story stunningly shows us how her
concern for this man and his family is replaced by a sense of her own vanity and
position in society. When she goes to her mother with her plea to try and cancel the
party, her mother is able to distract her with a new hat, and as she gazes at herself in
the mirror her pity dwindles away:
And now she hoped her mother was right. Am I
being extravagant? Perhaps it was extravagant. Just for a moment she had another glimpse
of that poor woman and those little children and the body being carried into the house.
But it all seemed blurred, unreal, like a picture in the newspaper. I'll remember it
again after the party's over, she decided. And somehow that seemed quite the best
plan...
However, after the
party, Laura has remembered this family and takes food to them from the party as an
offering of sympathy. Her encounter with the dead body and the way that he is so distant
from her world of social distinctions seems to show the way that this man is now beyond
the world of "lace-frocks" and garden parties and has reached a state of peace that is
a "marvel" in the eyes of Laura. She goes away from the house a changed person with this
reflection.
No comments:
Post a Comment