Mansfield uses similes throughout “The Garden Party” to compare characters to animals. One of Laura’s sisters is introduced as “Jose, the butterfly,” as she “always came down in a silk petticoat and a kimono jacket.” When Laura enters the kitchen, she hears a “tuk-tuk-tuk,” and the cook clucks “like an agitated hen.” This form of descriptive language extends to guests of the Sheridan Estate. After the “green-coated band” arrives, guest Kitty Maitland exclaims:
“My dear!” […] “aren’t they too like frogs for words? You ought to have arranged them round the pond with the conductor in the middle on a leaf.”
Once the garden party begins, the narrator observes:
[...] couples strolling, bending to the flowers, greeting, moving on over the lawn. They were like bright birds that had alighted in the Sheridans’ garden for this one afternoon.
In making these comparisons, the story emphasizes a sense of liveliness throughout the Sheridan Estate. Moreover, Mansfield’s use of simile adds to the story’s imaginative, whimsical style and its wondrous mood. It is as if the Sheridan Estate is a barn full of animals rather than people.
After the Sheridan family learns of Scott’s death, Laura disagrees with her mother over whether or not they ought to cancel the party. While looking at herself in the mirror, Laura’s thoughts turn to Scott’s family:
Just for a moment she had another glimpse of that poor woman and those little children, and [Scott’s] 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.
Mansfield uses a simile to reveal Laura’s childlike inability to accept reality. The fact that she thinks of Scott’s dead body as “a picture in the newspaper” rather than a real-life tragedy reflects the fact that the upper-class Sheridans are sheltered from much of the suffering that working-class people like the Scotts have to endure. Despite Laura’s attempts to shed class divisions and social boundaries, she finds it difficult to comprehend the experience of others beyond her class—not only Scott’s family, but the workmen setting up the garden party as well.
