The Dinner Party by Mona Gardner: Analysis

 The Dinner Party 

by Mona Gardner

The short story The Dinner Party was written by Mona Gardner and published on January 31, 1941. The story narrates the event of a dinner that was thrown by a colonial and his wife. Throughout the story, there is a conversation about women and their way of acting when situations come up. In terms of structure, the short story has a setting that is located in India in a spacious dining room, as the story mentions.

Furthermore, when it comes to plot, the story has a plot with a rising action. The rising action happens when in the table starts the discussion about how women react towards situations and with the idea that men handle situation better that women. Then, it also contains a climax when everyone sees the cobra emerge and make for the bowl and everyone starts screaming. Additionally, the falling action occurs when the American naturalist asks the hostess how she knew that there was a cobra in the room. However, the story does not have a conclusion or at least not a complete one. In fact, what it seems to have is a falling action with an open ending. The falling action occurs when the hostess answers saying that she knew that there was a cobra in the room because it was crawling across her foot.

On the other hand, the story portrays themes of gender and superiority by the male part. Themes which was at the end of the story well explained: whether you are woman or man, the way you act at certain circumstances is not defined by the gender, but by the human nature that both parts have. 

About the author:

There is not actual information or facts about the author and according to Mudford (2010) ''I could find very little information on the author, Mona Gardner, which is odd considering the popularity of her story "The Dinner Party." In fact, many 

Works Cited

https://my.hrw.com/support/hos/hostpdf/host_text_103.pdf

Howard, Allen. ‘‘Very Short Stories for Middle and High School Students to Read Online.’’ Owlcation. https://owlcation.com/academia/Very-Short-Stories-For-High-School.  Accessed 20 November 2020.

Mutford, John. ‘‘Reader's Diary #647- Mona Gardner: The Dinner Party,’’ Web blog post. Blogger. The Book Mine Set, 6 Sep. 2010. Web. 22 Nov. 2013.