Even though Katherine Mansfield’s literary career began almost a century ago, her works seem to find no end in the literary world. Each of her stories presents experiences, feelings, and thoughts with which people of all ages can share. Mansfield used different techniques in her works to convey a specific message or an idea. In this analysis we will shed light on one of the techniques which is frequently used by her, “The blazing moment”.
The key stone of Mansfield’s short story is really the moment’. These ‘moments’ can be divided into two distinct types; the habitual and the unique; the former reveals a typical moment in particular life/lives whereas the latter describes a unique event in a given life which may never be repeated, or as Mansfield call it, the blazing moment. As a definition, the blazing moment means a sudden spiritual manifestation caused by an external factor and that change the perspective of a character about an idea, life, other people, or the inner-self.
In the short story, Laura Sheridan plans for a huge garden party and invites high society visitors. Just before the party begins, Laura Sheridan learns that one of her neighbors has lost her husband through an accident. The death of the man conflicts with Laura’s intent of having a garden party. Laura insists that they should not hold a party when the neighbors are mourning, but her family declines to bow to her request. They hold a garden party, and after it's over, Laura Sheridan's mother insists on delivering the party leftovers to the grieving home while still in her garden party outfit. In the end of the story and before leaving the Scot’s house, Laura had a blazing moment and start crying, she realized something about life, but it remains ambiguous to the readers, and it is just another technique used by Mansfield (open endedness) to leave for the readers the opportunity to interpret what was that thing that Laura realized based on their understanding or experience in life.
We learnt from the courses of the story that Laura experienced a blazing moment, but it remains ambiguous to the readers. One of the interpretations about the blazing moment experienced by Laura is that after looking at Scot’s dead body she realized that death is not bad in fact Laura was impressed by the beauty of his body and the smile on Scot’s face. However, we can look at that blazing moment from a Marxist perspective and that Laura realized that whatever she tries the conflict between the upper class and the low class will be eternal, and a bucket of leftover won’t end this conflict.
To conclude, Mansfield used the blazing moment as a way to give the reader an answer about the result of Laura’s conflict. The ending of the garden party witnessed a unique moment in Laura’s life which made her realize something about life and the social class strata conflict, but Mansfield did not mention what is exactly this thing that Laura realized, instead she left it ambiguous to the readers to interpret.
