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The And The Garden Party Essay

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A social totality is not a concept born of mere delicate measure but of a grand scheme of aspects - of mixed languages and customs in a society or the social and economic class and the way those two intertwine. One of the best ways of defining a concept is to understand what it is not, or in a story, the characters that do not define it. Stories such as Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert and “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield both define the borders of the social totalities of their worlds by writing clear characters – Emma Bovary and Laura – that do not belong within that social realm. When stuck in their respective worlds that they grow up in, Emma and Laura believe they understand life because they know their places in the familiarity of what they have always known, but when they become exposed to that breach of their individual worlds, their knowledge is expanded to that of a social totality beyond what they knew. They no longer understand how to fit into their worlds because they do not relate to any of it, leaving them with a sense of discomfort and loneliness, longing for something more. The idea of writing a social totality comes from a process of building a society believable enough that the reader can immerse themselves into the story without strain, all the while incorporating solid facts of that society to make it seem realistic. As described by Georg Lukacs , “The goal for all great art is to provide a picture of reality in which the contradiction

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