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Class Tensions

Class tensions havebeen a topic of writers for many years. One writer that was able to grasp the concept and apply it to many different situations was Katherine Mansfield. She developed class tension as a theme in the short stories “The Doll’s House”, “Life of Ma Parker”, and “The Garden Party”. In all three of the short stories the theme of class tensions in extremely evident, but is applied to different groups of people and how it affects them. In “The Doll’s House”, two poor girls (Kelveys) go to a school that is full of high-class citizens that shun and ignore them because they are in such a low class. When a family with three daughters (Burnells), is given a dollhouse that is so magnificent they must show everybody, the Kelvey girls are not invited. Two by two all the girls at the school get to see the dollhouse but the Kelveys never get their chance. The middle child of the Burnells takes a risk and goes against the common acceptance of her family andinvites the Kelveys to take a look at the house. When Aunt Burnell see’s the Kelveys in the yard she shoes them away and scolds the youngest daughter. In “The Doll’s House” Mansfield shows how class tensions affect the life on two young sisters that have next to nothing. In the “Life of Ma Parker”, Mansfield changes pace to show how class tensions can affect an older age group. Ma Parker is an older lady that is part of the poor working-class. She has gone threw many hardships in her lifeand has never broken down. The majority of her children died along with her husband and all the rest but one left her. When she is introduced at the beginning of the story, her grandson has just been buried and she is full of grief. Her experience with class tensions is similar to that of the Kelveys, in that no one appreciates her and she feels unwanted. When the time comes for her to finally break down, she has no place to go, no place to cry. One last story that Mansfield uses to portray the negativity of class tensions is...

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