The Garden Party is a short story published in 1921. It was written by the New Zeelander Katherine Mansfield.

The Garden Party is a story about a garden party taking place at a mansion. In this mansion lives a white family who has many children. One of these children is Laura. Laura and her siblings are planning a garden party and invites friends and neighbours. 

However, the family gets news that a man has been killed in an accident and this man lived in the poor neighbourhood just outside of the Sheridan familys land. Laura is very chocked by the news and asks both her sister and her mother how they are going to stop the party in time since she belives it unappropriate to hold a party when a neighbour has died. Both her sister and her mother thinks her silly since they do not know the man or the family and because they see themselves more important than the poor black people living just outside of their lands.

One theme of this story is clearly racism and how white people see themselves as superior to black people. Another theme of this story is social class. The Sheridan family lives on top of a hill and looks down on the poor neighbourhood where the black people live. In the story Mansfield also writes about workmen and how Laura is superior to them since she belongs to a higher class and not working class. Laura is puzzled by the way the workmen speak to her since she is raised to belive that she is more important than people like them.

This superiority to lower classes is shown in several passages of the story. One which stuck to me was the part when Laura is going to go to the dead mans family with leaft over food from the party and is going to bring them some lilies to. However, her sister points out that Laura cannot carry the lilies since they will ruin her beautiful dress. This part of the story shows that Laura and her family thinks that it is more important look beutiful than to show kindness to other people.

This story is good material to use to get students to learn about the history of racism in the world since The Garden Party portraits racism in a understandable way.