Abstract

Katherine Mansfield is one of the most celebrated short story writers in the world. Most of her works focus on the theme of life and death, dream and reality. The Garden Party is one of her representative works, which demonstrates the contrast between the world of the garden party and the lane, the contrast between Laura and Mrs. Sheridan and the contrast between life and death. This thesis tries to analyze how the author artistically shows the clash of dream and reality—— an eternal literary theme.

Key words: The Garden Party, conflict, life and death, dream and reality

摘    要

凯瑟琳•曼斯菲尔德是举世闻名的短篇小说家之一。她的大多数作品都以生与死、梦想与现实为主题。她的代表作之一《园会》展示了园会世界和胡同世界之间的差异，萝拉和谢里丹夫人之间的差异，以及生与死之间的差异。本篇论文将分析作者如何艺术地再现梦想与现实的冲突——这个永恒的文学主题。

关键词：《园会》 ；冲突；生和死；梦想和现实

1. Introduction
Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is one of the most celebrated short story writers in the world. Born in Wellington, Mansfield left New Zealand in 1908 and traveled alone to England. Since then she began her writing career and played an important role in the movement of British Modernism at that time. Together with James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, Mansfield greatly influenced the innovation of short stories in English and was crowned as “the Master of Short Stories”.
Although died at an early age of thirty-five, Katherine Mansfield is a prolific writer, especially of story stories. Mansfield’s first collection of short stories was In a German Pension (1911), and the second was published in 1920, titled Bliss and Other Stories. And in 1922, there came The Garden Party and Other Stories. Among these short stories, Prelude (1917), A Dill Pickle (1917), Bliss (1918), Miss Brill (1920), The Daughters of the Late Colonel (1920) and The Garden Party (1921) are enjoying a widespread international reputation.