The Garden Party
by Katherine Mansfield

The Garden Party: Setting 1 key example

Definition of Setting

Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:

Many of Katherine Mansfield’s stories, including “The Garden Party,” take place in New Zealand, Mansfield’s place of origin. Mansfield was born into a socially prominent, wealthy family, much like the Sheridans in “The Garden Party.” The Sheridan Estate, the story’s primary setting, is based on Mansfield’s childhood home. 

The story opens in the Sheridans’ garden on a day they plan to host a party. The narrator describes the garden in idyllic terms: 

They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden party if they had ordered it. Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud. Only the blue was veiled with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimes in early summer. The gardener had been up since dawn, mowing the lawns and sweeping them, until the grass and the dark flat rosettes where the daisy plants had been seemed to shine.