Hidden in full view: a subliminal reading of The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield

Despite the numerous and often contradictory readings The Garden Party has stimulated down the years, the story has two key modernist concerns which remain under-explored. The first is sexuality and sexual awakening and their conscious and unconscious manifestations in everyday life—a theme that isexplicitly foregrounded in some of Mansfield’s other stories. The second is the trauma of death. Although the heroine’s encounter with a corpse is widely regarded as a pivotal moment in the story, death itself and the interplay within the text between life and death have received limited attention to date. This essay examines the text through the lens of psychoanalytical theory and in relation to the traumatic war which had ended four years before the publication of the story. Through a subliminal reading of the imagery throughout the story, it uncovers the subconscious forces so skilfully evoked within the heroine herself who is the conscious unconsciousness at the core of the text.