The garden as a liminal space: Women’s ideological becoming in Catherine Mansfield’s “The Garden Party”

Abstract

This research article investigates the symbolic importance of the garden in Katherine Mansfield's "The Garden Party," particularly as it represents feminine spaces, liminality, and ideological becoming. Employing close textual analysis and feminist literary theory, it charts the garden's role as a complex symbol that reflects and contests traditional gender roles and broader cultural norms. Arguing for the garden as an ideological site of transformation for protagonist Laura Sheridan, this paper examines her passage from the naive innocence of girlhood to an awakened awareness of the social inequalities and moral complexities that surround her. The paper illustrates, through a detailed study of the text, how the garden in "The Garden Party" is, by turns, a reflection and a refraction of Victorian femininity, domesticity, and class distinction.