Class Consciousness in Mansfield’s “The Garden Party” and Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”

Katherine Mansfield’s short story, “The Garden Party,” and George Orwell’s essay, “Shooting an Elephant,” provides ample room to discuss a distorted sense of class-consciousness achieved through dramatic irony and embellishment. The narrators’ perspectives, or lack thereof, from their position of high rank within the societies they feel they hold some superior knowledge of causes the ironic effect. In reality, it is their very perspective of privilege that causes their blindness to the full meaning of their actions. In both works, the narrator is faced with a dilemma between moral obligation and societal expectations. While both Laura in “The Garden Party” and the narrator of “Shooting an Elephant” seem to have moments of guilt over the inequalities among people so close to them, ultimately the two are blinded by their positions in society, which make them turn from what they believe is right and to succumb to merely what their status suggests they should do.

Both Mansfield’s character Laurie and Orwell’s narrator struggle to comprehend their societal positions in the larger scheme of basic human decency; these characters are inevitably morally stunted by their social class and position within their respective societies. While it is easy to scoff at Laurie’s idealization of the working-class people who come to her estate to prepare for the garden party, she does feels an innate sense that it is unjust for her family to host a party while their “almost neighbors” are in mourning down in the adjacent “mean little cottages”(Mansfield). Similarly, Orwell’s narrator knows that British Imperialism has turned ugly and oppressive towards the people of Burma, and yet as an Englishman, he still can’t quite sympathize with the Burmese people who taunt him in his role as a police officer in their country, which is now under British rule.

The class-consciousness exhibited by Mansfield’s Laurie and Orwell’s narrator is two-fold. The consciousness exists in the minds of these characters, which is then translated and further scrutinized by the reader, creating degrees of separation felt so often throughout Mansfield’s story:

Is mother right? she thought. 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 ... (Mansfield).

The realities of life are easily whisked away through indulgence in parties and pastries. When Laurie worries about continuing the party in light of the tragedy by those who live on the edges of their estate, she reasons that it is too fine a day to waste by not having the party and she will give the tragedy its due justice by thinking about it later. Laurie exercises classic avoidance and escapism that only her privileged upbringing allows for. For the “almost neighbors” down the lane, they don’t have the luxury of living life at a distance from reality and this becoming glaring in comparison to Laurie and her family.

Class-consciousness also reads like a class-conscience in that both Laurie and the narrator of “Shooting an Elephant” possess a conscience that alerts them to the injustice being committed, and yet their class conscience holds them to what is perceived as proper as opposed to what is right or just. Class-consciousness begins as a struggle for these characters, but ultimately becomes an excuse for their behavior. Initially, the reader is hopeful that the narrator has a perception of life beyond the surface level, but once their dystopian will is put to the test, both fail miserably at choosing righteousness.

For Laurie, her weakness becomes not just her own psychological removal from the tragedy of a lower-class family, but also in her need to falsely justify her reasons to act haughtily and simply vow to think of their plight later. For the narrator of Orwell’s story, the reader is perhaps, even more, let down, assuming that a grown man will have the decency to act with integrity. The fact that this narrator speaks so openly about his disgust for imperialism, in the end, it is this same brute force that causes him to kill the elephant and have it suffer so cruelly. The narrator is so consumed in the people’s perception of him, both his fellow Englishmen and the Burmese people he wants to demand respect from that he chooses to let the animal suffer. Worse still, he laments the death of the animal and not the death of the man in the streets, acting as if the latter were somehow just part of the scenery of what happens to people in the less-civilized Eastern world and the former some kind of further punishment directed at himself, not the helpless creature he shoots as a spectacle. “They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands, I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it” (Orwell). Just a few sentences prior the narrator was certain he didn’t need to kill the elephant, but he quickly loses any sense of conviction about doing the right thing as opposed to doing what is expected.

By the end of Mansfield’s novel, Laurie has reverted back to her original trivialization of the working-class people. When she brings the party’s leftovers to the mourning neighbors, she loses all sense of propriety that she had been so comfortably employed as she floated carelessly around the garden party. Instead of expressing her sorrow and condolences for the tragic death of the man down the lane, she simply apologizes for being overdressed, particularly for her fancy hat. This once again reinforces just how aloof Laurie is from the reality of life for these people. While her biggest trials of the day were selecting this hat to wear and deciding where the marquee should be placed in the garden, these people are faced with extreme poverty and raising five children now without a father to provide any income whatsoever. The story appropriately ends when her brother comes to check on her and instead of confiding in him as she had planned, all she can manage to say is “Isn't it, darling?” (Mansfield). Her emotional outpouring here seems disingenuous and it seems Mansfield intended for this. We can read this statement as a response regards to her brother’s similar lack of expression of sorrow for the people in mourning, or we can read it is her further trivialization of the situation by calling it “darling.”

The disappointment one feels over the behavior of Laurie in “The Garden Party” and the narrator of “Shooting an Elephant” lies in their general lack of character. While these characters seem to stand out from the rest of their privileged social groups in an early recognition of the unfair treatment of the poor and oppressed people they live amongst, it becomes even more disheartening when they choose instead to turn a blind eye to acting as their consciences dictate, simply for the sake of saving face. Although Laurie is a young girl and the narrator presumably a young man who should know better, Laurie’s precocious nature expressed through the alignment of her thought process and the similar intellect shown by Orwell’s narrator does not allow us to let these characters off the hook of responsibility for their moral depravation. These two bright young characters choose the easy way out by hiding behind a feigned mask of indifference to what is right, making both of these stories read more like tragedies.

Works Cited

Mansfield, Katherine. “The Garden Party.” Name of Textbook. City of publication, year. Print.

Orwell, George. “Shooting an Elephant.” Name of Textbook. City of publication, year. Print.