With incredibly vivid pictographic descriptions of the environment, surrounding structures and botanical growing’s, the reader is drawn into the imagination of the author. The feelings and expressions are described in such a way that the reader is left with a feeling of silent inclusion in a story of a family’s inner workings, privilege and outlook.
This is a story of a young lady struggle to conform to her mothers’ belief in socio-economic levels and their (family’s) place atop them. Laura, the focal character of the story, is confronted with the unpleasant news that a working-class man, from a group of homes near her family’s, has passed away after being thrown from a horse. This news has come on the very day that her family is set to host a garden party with many guests. Laura feels that the proper thing to do, at such a time, is to cancel or at least postpone the garden party as a sign of respect to her grieving neighbors. As she contemplates and eventually raises this desire to her family she is quickly brushed off. Their belief is that not only should the tragedy, which had fallen upon the lower class family, not interrupt their life, nor should it infringe upon the expected happiness of their soon-to-arrive guests. In fact Laura’s mother believes that lower class people actually expect higher class people to not show such respect to them at all and to do so would be out of the normal order of things.
As Laura, is continuing her day with preparations for her family’s garden party. She finds the simple but beautiful nuances of a group of workers that have come to her family’s home to erect a marquee that will be used during the family’s garden party. She has discovered a feeling of new understanding for the human male species. She finds herself surprised when it became clear to her that men enjoy the both the visual and scented beauty of botanical growing’s. There comes a time in the story when an unnamed worker pauses from his work to reach down to a...