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Discussion starters:
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What does this story say about class
relations?
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How might you suggest Mansfield's own illness
impacted this story?
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Lohafer says, "we do not 'spend' [the
story] too quickly as sob-story or, for that matter, as protest-story."
What kind of story is it, if these are ruled out?
- Lohafer says that this story is "an
unabashed tear-jerker" and that the author's "tougher insights and
cooler ironies fail to control her sentimentality." Do you find
the story ineffective for this or somehow enriched?
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Critical Sources:
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Dickson, Katherine Murphy. Katherine
Mansfield's New Zealand Stories. Lanham, MD: UP of America, 1998.
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Kobler, J.F. Katherine Mansfield: A
Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1990.
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Lohafer, Susan. "Why the 'Life of
Ma Parker' is Not So Simple: Preclosure in Issue-bound Stories." Studies
in Short Fiction 33 (Fall 1996): 475-86. On campus available
through EBSCOhost here.
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Sage, Lorna. Introduction. The
Garden Party and Other Stories. By Katherine Mansfield. New York:
Penguin, 1997. vii-xxi.
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